4 




© Harris & Ewing 

ATTORNEY-GENERAL THOMAS W. GREGORY 
Who directed the nation-wide work of arresting and prosecuting German 
plotters and of interning dangerous enemy aliens 



FIGHTING 
GERMANY'S SPIES 



By 
FRENCH STROTHER 




Illustrated 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY 

1918 



"W 



^% 



COPYRIGHT, 191 8, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



!«■ 



1 ibid * 

©CLA508107 ^ 



FOREWORD 

"Fighting Germany's Spies" is published to bring 
home to the public in a detailed and convincing 
manner the character of the German activities in 
the United States. By courtesy of the Bureau of 
Investigation of the Department of Justice the facts 
and documents of this narrative have been verified. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Foreword v 

Introduction xi 

CHAPTER 

I. The inside story of the passport 
frauds and the first glimpse of 
Werner Horn 3 

II. The inside story of Werner Horn 
and the first glimpse of the ship 
bombs . . ... 

III. Robert Fay and the ship bombs 

IV. The inside story of the Captain of 

the Eitel Friedrich 



V. James J. F. Archibald and his pro- 
German activities 

VI. A tale told in telegrams . = . 

VII. German codes and ciphers . . 

VIII. The Tiger of Berlin meets the Wolf 
of Wall Street .... 
IX. The American Protective League 
X. The German-Hindu conspiracy 
XI. Dr. Scheele, chemical spy . . 



37 
60 

83 

92 
109 
134 

158 
192 

223 
258 



LIST OF HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS 

Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

German agents who dealt in fraudulent 
passports 16 

The official German plotters at Washington 32 

Captain Thierichens and scenes on the 
Eitel Friedrich 88 

"When the water gets to the boilers" . . 112 

Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski 152 

Rintelen and his confederates .... 184 

Officers of the American Protective League 200 

LINE CUTS IN THE TEXT 



PAGE 



A German attache reminds Bernstorff of 
Wedell . 6 

The successful use of a fraudulent passport 18 

Von Papen and Albert appear as unneutral 
plotters 28, 29 

ix 



x ILLUSTRATIONS 

pact: 

The card "of the guileless stranger from 
Tokyo" 31 

Von Papen becomes accessory to a crime 33 

Two of Ruroedes visitors' credentials 34 

Horn's application for a furlough . . . 39 

Werner Horn's plan of escape . . . .41 

Werner Horn's commission in the German 
army 48, 49 

Werner Horn's confession . . . . 56, 57 

The Lusitania warning ..... 94, 95 

Code message transmitting money to Sir 
Roger Casement 137 

A letter from John Devoy, an Irish- 
American, exposing his hand in a plot 
with the Germans . . . . . . 140 

Extracts from a German code expert's 
blotter 147 

Bolo's handwriting . . . . . . . 148 

A tale told in cablegrams .... 150, 151 

The Cohalan-Irish Revolution message 154, 155 



INTRODUCTION 

Espionage has always been to Americans one 
of the hateful relics of an outworn political 
system of Europe from which America was fortu- 
nately free. We lived in an atmosphere not 
tainted with dynastic ambitions or internal 
oppression. We had no secret agents spying 
and plotting in other countries and were slow 
to suspect other countries of doing such things 
here. 

The war, however, disillusioned us. We found 
our soil to be infested with representatives of an 
unscrupulous Power which did not hesitate to 
violate our hospitality and break its most sacred 
pledges in using this country as a base for un- 
neutral plots against France and Great Britain. 
We soon learned that these plots were directed 
against us as well. They were only another 
manifestation of the spirit which led to the open 
hostility of Germany which forced us into war. 

For a time we were at a great disadvantage 
in meeting the situation. We had no secret 
police; we had no laws adequate to deal with 
these novel offenses. 

XI 



4 INTRODUCTION 

The Department of Justice met the situation, 
so far as it could under existing law, by a great 
enlargement of its Bureau of Investigation, and 
by the creation of a legal division devoted 
entirely to problems arising out of the war. 
Congress substantially supplied the deficiency 
in the laws by the passage of appropriate 
statutes. Under the powers obtained in these 
two directions the Department proceeded vig- 
orously to the suppression of sedition, the intern- 
ment of enemy aliens, and the prosecution of 
German agents. Its success is, I feel, attested 
by the absence of disorder in this country under 
war-time conditions. Open German activities 
have long since ceased here and the more subtle 
operations have been driven so far under cover 
as to be ineffective. In this work the Depart- 
ment of Justice has had the efficient and loyal 
aid of private citizens, who have responded 
generously to a patriotic impulse, through the 
agency of the American Protective League and 
similar organizations. 

Mr. Strother's narrative covers some of the 
more outstanding cases of the period when 
German plotting was at its height. The fail- 
ure of these plots and the retribution visited 
upon the evil-doers are evidences, not merely of 
governmental efficiency, but of that of old, 
age-old, substantive laws of morality, which 

xii 



INTRODUCTION 

Germany as a nation has undertaken to flout- 
as we now know, in vain — both here and else- 
where. 

T. W. Gregory 
Attorney-General. 
Washington, D. C. 
August 14, 1918. 



Xlll 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 



FIGHTING 
GERMANY'S SPIES 

CHAPTER I 

The Inside Story of the Passport Frauds 

and 
The First Glimpse of Werner Horn 

WHEN Carl Ruroede, the "genius" of the 
German passport frauds, came suddenly 
to earth in the hands of agents of the Department 
of Justice and unbosomed himself to the United 
States Assistant District Attorney in New York, 
he said sadly: 

"I thought I was going to get an Iron Cross; 
but what they ought to do is to pin a little tin 
stove on me." 

The cold, strong hand of American justice 
wrung that very human cry from Ruroede, 
who was the central figure (though far from the 
most sinister or the most powerful) in this 
earliest drama of Germany's bad faith with 
neutral America — a drama that dealt in for- 
gery, blackmail, and lies that revealed in 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

action the motives of greed and jealousy and 
ambition, and that ended with three diplo- 
mats disgraced, one plotter in the penitentiary, 
and another sent to a watery grave in the 
Atlantic by a torpedo from a U-boat of the 
very country he had tried to serve. This is 
the story: 

Twenty-five days after the Kaiser touched 
the button which publicly notified the world 
that Germany at last had decided that "The 
Day" had come — to be exact, on Augustus, 
1914 — Ambassador Bernstorff wrote a letter 
effusively addressed to "My very honoured 
Mr. Von Wedell." (Ruroede had not yet 
appeared on the scene.) The letter? itself was 
more restrained than the address, but in it 
Bernstorff condescended to accept tentatively 
an offer of Wedell's to make a nameless voyage. 
The voyage was soon made, for on September 
24th Wedell left Rotterdam, bearing a letter 
from the German Consul-General there, asking 
all German authorities to speed him on his way 
to Berlin, because he was bearing dispatches 
to the Foreign Office. Arrived in Berlin, Wedell 
executed his commission and then called upon 
his uncle, Count Botho von Wedell, a high 
functionary of the Foreign Office. He was 
aflame with a great idea, which he unfolded to 
his uncle. The idea was approved, and right 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

after the elections in November he was back 
in New York to put it into execution, incidentally 
bearing with him some letters handed him by- 
order of Mr. Ballin, head of the Hamburg 
American Steamship Company, and another 
letter "for a young lady who goes to America 
in the interest of Germany." If unhappy 
Wedell had let this be his last voyage — but 
that belongs later in the story. 

Wedell's scheme was this: He learned in Berlin 
that Germany had at home all the common 
soldiers she expected to need, but that more 
officers were wanted. He was told that Ger- 
many cared not at all whether the 100,000 
reservists in America got home or not, but 
that she cared very much indeed to get the 
800 or 1,000 officers in North and South America 
back to the Fatherland. Nothing but the 
ocean and the British fleet stood in their way. 
The ocean might be overcome. But the British 

fleet ? Wedell proposed the answer: He would 

buy passports from longshoremen in New York 
— careless Swedes or Swiss or Spaniards to 
whom $20 was of infinitely more concern than 
a mere lie — and send the officers to Europe, 
armed with these documents, as neutrals travel- 
ling on business. Once in Norway or Spain or 
Italy, to get on into Germany would be easy. 

For a few weeks Wedell got along famously. 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

He bought passports and papers showing nativity 
from Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Swiss 
longshoremen and sailors. Meantime, he got 
in touch with German reserve officers and passed 
them on to Europe on these passports. 







*N 




♦Stftl 







A GERMAN ATTACHE REMINDS BERNSTORFF OF WEDELL 
This telegram is from Haniel von Haimhausen, the counsellor of the 
German Embassy in Washington, and was sent in response to an inquiry 
from Bernstorff for the name of the man who had offered to act as a 
messenger to Germany for him. The message reads: 

Count Bernstorff, care Ritz Carlton. Hans Adam von Wedell attorney fifteen 
William Street, New York he has been introduced by consul Hossenfelder, Haniel. 

But he was not content with these foreign 
passports. In the case of a few exceptionally 
valuable German officers he wished to have 
credentials that would be above all suspicion. 
Consequently, he set about to gather a few 
American passports. Here his troubles began, 
and here he added the gravest burden to his 

6 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

already great load of culpabilities. For Von 
Wedell was an American citizen, and proud 
of it. But he was prouder still of his German 
origin and his high German connections, and 
in his eagerness to serve them he threw over- 
board his loyalty to the land of his adoption. 
Von Wedell applied to a friend of his, a cer- 
tain Tammany lawyer of pro-German sympa- 
thies, who had supplied him with a room 
belonging to a well-known fraternal organiza- 
tion as a safe base from which to handle his 
work in passports. What he wanted was an 
agent who was an American and who had politi- 
cal acquaintanceship that would : enable him 
to work with less suspicion and with wider or- 
ganization in gathering American passports. 
Through the lawyer he came in contact with' an 
American, who for the [purposes of this story 
may be called Mr. Carrots, because that is not 
his name but is remotely like it. Carrots 
seemed willing to go into the enterprise and 
at a meeting in Von Wedell's room Von Wedell 
carefully unfolded the scheme, taking papers 
from a steel cabinet in the corner to show a 
further reason why the American passports he 
already had would soon be useless. This reason 
was that the Government was about to issue 
an order requiring that a photograph of the 
bearer should be affixed to the passport and that 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

on this photograph should appear half of the 
embossing raised by the impression of the 
seal of the Department of State. He agreed 
to pay Carrots $20 apiece for all genuine pass- 
ports he would supply to him. Carrots accepted 
his proposal and departed. 

Instead of going out to buy passports, he 
went at once to the Surveyor of the Port of New 
York, Mr. Thomas E. Rush, and told him what 
Wedell was doing. Mr. Rush promptly got 
in touch with his chief in the Treasury Depart- 
ment at Washington, who referred the matter 
to the State Department, and they, in turn, to 
the Department of Justice. The result was 
that Carrots went back to Wedell about a week 
later and told him he would not be able to 
go on with the work but would supply some- 
one to take his place. This was satisfactory to 
Wedell. 

In the meantime, Wedell had introduced 
Carrots to a fellow-conspirator, Carl Ruroede, 
a clerk in the ship forwarding department of 
Oelrichs & Company — a man of little position, 
but fired by the war with the ambition to make 
a name in German circles that would put him 
in a position to succeed Oelrichs & Company 
as the general agent of the North German 
Lloyd in New York. 

About this time Wedell lost his nerve. He 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

was a lawyer and realized some of the possible 
consequences of certain of his acts. He had had 
occasion to forge names to two passports; and 
also he found out that he had reasons to suspect 
that he was under surveillance. These reasons 
were very good: he had arranged for the trans- 
portation to Italy of a German named Doctor 
Stark, using the passport of a friend of his in 
the newspaper business named Charles Raoul 
Chatillon. Wedell got wind of the fact that 
Stark had been taken off the steamer Duca de 
Aosta at Gibraltar, and was being detained 
while the British looked up his credentials. 

Wedell by this time was in a most unhappy 
plight. Bernstorff and Von Papen had no use 
for him because he had been bragging about 
the great impression he was going to make upon 
the Foreign Office in Berlin by his work. If 
any impressions were to be made upon the 
Foreign Office in Berlin by anybody in America, 
Bernstorff and Von Papen wanted to make them. 
Wedell was so dangerously under suspicion 
that Von Papen, Von Igel, and his Tammany 
lawyer friend had all warned him he had better 
get out of the country. Wedell took their 
advice and fled to Cuba. 

The substitute whom Carrots had promised 
now entered the case, in the person of a man 
who called himself Aucher, but who was in 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

reality a special agent of the Department of 
Justice. Aucher was not introduced to Ruroede, 
the now active German, and so, when he began 
his operations, he confronted the very difficult 
task of making his own connections with a 
naturally suspicious person. 

Carrots had been dealing with Ruroede after 
Wedell's disappearance; and, by the time he 
was ready to quit, Ruroede had told him that 
"everything was off for the present," but that 
if he would drop around again to his office 
about January 7, 1915, he might make use of 
him. Aucher, now on the case, did not wait 
for that date, but on December 18th called on 
Ruroede at his office at room 204 of the Mari- 
time Building, at No. 8 Bridge Street, across 
the way from the Customs House. 

In this plainly furnished office Aucher ap- 
peared in the guise of a Bowery tough. He 
succeeded admirably in this role — so well, 
indeed, that Ruroede afterward declared that 
he "succeeded wonderfully in impressing upon 
my mind that he was a gangman, and I had 
visions of slung shots, pistol shots, and hold- 
ups when he saw him. Aucher opened the con- 
versation by announcing: 

"I'm a friend of Carrots." 

"That's interesting," was Ruroede's only 
acknowledgment. 

10 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

"He's the guy that's getting them passports 
for you," went on Aucher, "and all I wants 
to know is, did you give him any cush?" 

"What do you mean?" asked Ruroede. 

"Nix on that!" Aucher exclaimed. "You 
know what I mean. Did you give that fellow 
any money?" 

To which Ruroede replied : " I don't see why 
I should, tell you if I did." 

"Well, " retorted Aucher, " I'll tell you why. 
I'm the guy that delivers the goods, and he 
swears he never got a penny from you. Now 
did he?" 

It was at this point that Ruroede had his 
visions of slung shots, so he admitted he had 
paid Carrots #100 only a few days before. 

"Well," demanded Aucher, "ain't there going 
to be any more ? " 

"Nope. Not now,' Ruroede replied. "May- 
be next month." 

"Now see here," said Aucher. "Let's cut 
this guy out. He's just nothing but a booze 
fighter, and he's been kidding you for money 
without delivering the goods. What's the mat- 
ter with just fixing it up between ourselves?" 

Ruroede now tried to put Aucher off till 
Christmas, having recalled meanwhile that the 
steamer Bergensfjord was to sail on January 
2d, and that he might need passports for 

11 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

officers travelling on that ship. But Aucner 
protested that he was "broke," and further 
impressed on Ruroede that he had gotten no 
money from Carrots or Wedell for his work 
for them. He also produced six letters written 
by the State Department in answer to applicants 
for passports, and finally convinced Ruroede 
of his good faith and that he ought to start 
him to work right away. They haggled over 
the price, and finally agreed on $20 apiece for 
passports for native-born Americans and #30 
apiece for passports of naturalized citizens — the 
higher price for getting the latter because they 
involved more red-tape and hence more risk. 
Aucher was to come back on December 24th 
and bring the passports and get some money 
on account. 

On that day Aucher called at Ruroede's 
office, and after further quarrelling about Car- 
rots and his honesty, Ruroede declared that 
he was ready to do business. Aucher objected 
to the presence of a young man in the room 
with them, and Ruroede replied: 

"Oh, he's all right. He's my son, and you 
needn't be afraid to talk with him around." 

Aucher then produced an American passport, 
No. 45, 573, made out in the name of Howard 
Paul Wright, for use in Holland and Germany. 
It was a perfectly good passport, too, as it had 

12 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

been especially made out for the purpose by 
the Department of State at the request of the 
Department of Justice. It bore Mr. Bryan's 
genuine signature, and a photograph of 
"Wright," who was another agent of the Bureau 
of Investigation. Aucher also declared he was 
on the way toward getting the other five pass- 
ports. Ruroede threw the Wright passport on 
his desk and said: 

"I'll keep this. Go ahead and get the 
others." 

"What about money?" demanded Aucher. 

"I'll pay you #25 for it — no, I'll do better 
than that. To show you I mean business, 
take that," and he threw a #100 bill on the 
table. Ruroede also gave Aucher photographs 
of four German officers, and begged him to 
get passports right away to fit their descriptions, 
because he wanted to get these men off on the 
Norwegian Line steamer Bergensfjord, sailing 
January 2d. He added that the officers of 
the Norwegian Line had all been "smeared" 
(otherwise "fixed") and that they would "stand 
for anything." He also said that he would 
take at least forty more passports from Aucher, 
and that he would want them right along for 
six months or a year, depending on the length 
of the war. 

Aucher delivered two more passports to 

13 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Ruroede in his office on the morning of Decem- 
ber 30th. Ruroede was rather indifferent about 
getting them, because — alas for the glory of 
the "invincible" Prussian arms! — two of his 
German officers had gotten "cold feet" and had 
refused to go. Ruroede told Aucher to come 
back at two o'clock and he would give him 
$100. Aucher invited Ruroede to have luncheon 
with him, and as they left the building Ruroede 
explained with much pride that he had chosen 
his office here because the building had several 
entrances on different sides of the block, and 
he used one entrance only a few days at a time 
and then changed to another to avoid suspicion. 

The Government's special agent complimented 
him highly on this bit of cleverness in the art 
of evasion. Five minutes later the two were 
sitting at a lunch counter with another special 
agent casually lounging in and taking the seat 
next to his fellow operative, where he could 
overhear and corroborate the account of Ru- 
roede's conversation. 

After a discussion of Wedell's forgeries and 
present whereabouts, and a further discussion of 
the buying of passports (in which Ruroede 
confided to Aucher that "there is a German 
fund that was sent over here for that purpose") 
the pair walked back toward Ruroede's office. 
At the Whitehall Street entrance Ruroede 

H 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

told " Aucher to come around to the Bridge 
Street entrance in about fifteen minutes to 
get the money, and that in the meantime he 
would send his son out to cash a check so that 
he could deliver it in bills. Aucher spent part 
of the fifteen minutes signalling to four other 
special agents who had reinforced him, and then 
went around to the Bridge Street entrance, 
with one of his confederates in sight. 

In a few moments, Ruroede's son rushed out 
with a bank book in his hand. Aucher stopped 
him and told him he ought to have a coat on, a 
device to let Aucher's fellow operative see him 
talking to the boy so he could identify him. 
The boy then went on to the bank, followed by 
Aucher's confederate, who saw him cash the 
check and followed him back to the building. 

When the boy returned, Aucher again spoke 
to him and said: "Tell your father I will be 
in the cafe at Whitehall and Bridge streets and 
that he is to meet me there. I don't think it 
is a good thing for anybody to see me hanging 
around the front entrance." 

Aucher then went on into the cafe and sig- 
nalled to the other three operatives to follow 
him. He took a seat in a bootblack's chair 
near the entrance and proceeded to have his 
shoes blacked. In about ten minutes Ru- 
roede's son came out and was about to pass by 

IS 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

him when Aucher hailed him. Ruroede's son 
then took a sealed envelope from his inside 
pocket and handed it to Aucher. 

"Where is your father ?" Aucher asked. 

"Oh, he's got a man upstairs with him," 
said young Ruroede, "and he couldn't come 
down." 

"Wait a minute," said Aucher, and tore open 
the envelope in the presence of Ruroede's son, 
and, so that the other special agents could 
see him do it, counted out ten $10 bills, $100 in 
all. As he was counting them, the operative 
who had followed Ruroede's son to the bank 
came in and shouldered the boy to one side 
and then stood right by him while the money 
was being counted. Aucher went on to impress 
on Ruroede's son that business was business 
and that the best of friends sometimes fell out 
over money matters; that his father might 
have unintentionally counted out #80 or #90 
instead of the full $100 and it was safer to take 
some precautions than to take a chance of 
creating bad blood between them. He then 
invited Ruroede's son to have a drink with 
him, which he did, both of them taking the 
strongest Prussian drink — milk. When they 
were about to part on Whitehall Street Aucher 
told Ruroede's son to tell his father he would 
be down the next morning with the other two 

16 




GERMAN AGENTS WHO DEALT IN FRAUDULENT PASSPORTS 
H. A. Von Wedell Carl Ruroede 

AMERICANS HIRED TO BLOW UP SHIPS AND FACTORIES 
C. C. Crowley Lewis J. Smith 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

passports he had mentioned to him, and again 
impressed on the boy the importance of accuracy 
in money matters. Aucher then returned to 
headquarters with the other special agents and 
listed the distinguishing marks on the bills 
and marked them for future identification. 

The next morning Aucher telephoned to 
Ruroede and told him he had been able to get 
only one of the two passports he wanted, giving 
as the excuse for his failure to get the other 
the story that it had been promised to him by a 
man working on a job in Long Island and that 
this man had met with an accident and was 
in the hospital; that it would take a day or 
two to go out there to get a written order 
from him to a brother who would turn the pass- 
port over to Aucher. Ruroede accepted an 
invitation to take luncheon with Aucher at 
Davidson's restaurant at the corner of Broad 
and Bridge streets. 

Shortly after noon they met on the street 
and went into the restaurant together. A few 
minutes after they were seated two of the 
special agents came in and took a table about 
fifteen feet away. After Aucher had ordered 
lunch for himself and Ruroede, he took out of 
his pocket another of the series of genuine 
passports supplied by the State Department, to 
which he had attached one of the photographs 

17 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 




i^Qtc^ *&*&"■ 










THE SUCCESSFUL USE OF A FRAUDULENT PASSPORT 
An English translation of the letter, the first and last pages of which 
are shown above, follows: 

S. S. Kristianiafjord, Bordjen, Nov. 20, 1914. Most honoured Mr. Ruroede: As you 
see, my voyage across succeeded magnificently with your kind help. The weather until 
Sunday was fine — then three days' storm. The beginning was not of a nature to inspire 
confidence, for five hours after we had left New York we were stopped by a cruiser and for 
two hours the ship's papers were searched for contraband. We had also some copper on 
board, but that was for Norway, whereupon they let us go. Our Captain then ran straight 
North to the 63 latitude. We nearly touched Iceland in order to get out of the way of 
other cruisers. It was only while we were making for Bergen from a northerly direction 
yesterday that a cruiser overtook and stopped us, and for a short while six of your men were 
feeling pretty shaky, especially I, for among the 18 first-class passengers, more than half 
were Germans, also a former vice-consul from Japan (now captain of cavalry) of the 
Bonn Hussars, Naval Officer from China, and others. The incident lasted only a half 
hour. After searching for ship's papers, the gentlemen disappeared, and we breathed 

more freely, and drank a cocktail to the and your prosperity. Once more many thanks 

for your assistance. May you help many others as well. With best wishes, Yours, 
Edward Eaton, in Japan named Eichelbert. 

Ruroede had given him for this purpose. He 
handed the passport to Ruroede, who opened 
only one end of it, just enough to glance at the 
photograph and seal. 

"That's fine," said Ruroede, and was about 
to slip it into his pocket when Aucher seized it 
and exclaimed : 



18 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

"Fine? I should say," and opened the pass- 
port wide so that one of the other special agents 
could see the red seal on it. "Just look at 
that description. Eh? He is the fellow with 
the military bearing and I gave him a description 
I figured a man like him should answer to." 

At this point, the special agent who had 
seen the seal left his seat at the table and 
walked to the cashier's desk. As he passed, 
Ruroede was holding the passport in his hands 
and Aucher was pointing out the description. 
Ruroede then put the passport into his pocket 
and said again: "That's fine." 

Aucher then opened a discussion of Von 
Wedell's career and disappearance. Ruroede 
was very contemptuous of the missing man. 
"He was a plain fool," he said. "He paid 
$3,500 altogether and got very little in return. 
A fellow came to him one day and told him he 
could get him American passports and Von 
Wedell said: 'All right; go ahead.' The fel- 
low returned later and said he would have to 
have some expense money and he gave him $10. 
A little while later a friend of the first man 
came to Von Wedell wanting expense money. 
When Von Wedell decided to put him off, he 
became threatening and Von Wedell, fearing 
he might tell the Government authorities, 
gave him some money. A few days later 

19 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

about twenty fellows came looking for Von 
Wedell. But quite aside from that sort of 
business Von WedelPs foolishness in forging 
names on two American passports is the thing 
that made him get away." 

"Did I understand you to say," asked 
Aucher, "that he had gone to join his wife?" 

"No," replied Ruroede, "she will be in 
Germany before him. She sailed last Tuesday. 
He went to Cuba first and there got a Mexican 
passport of some sort that will take him to 
Spain. He ought to be in Barcelona to-day 
and from there go to Italy, and then from there 
work his way into Germany." 

"You say Von Wedell spent $3,500 of his 
own money ? " Aucher asked. 

"No, no," exclaimed Ruroede, "he got it from 
the fund." 

"Well, who puts up this money— who's back 
ofit?" 

"The Government." 

"The German Government ?" 

"Yes," said Ruroede. "You see it is this 
way: There is a captain here who is attached 
to the German Embassy at Washington. He has 
a list of German reservists in this country and 
is in touch with the German consulates all 
through the country and in Peru, Mexico, 
Chile, etc. He gets in touch with them, and 

20 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

the consuls send reservists, who want to go to 
the front, on to New York. When they get 
here, this captain tells them: 'Well, I can't 
do anything for you, but you go down to see 
Ruroede/ Sometimes he gives them his 
personal card." 

"Is this captain in reserve?" Aucher inter- 
rupted. 

"Oh, no, he is active," Ruroede replied. 
: 'You see," he continued, "he draws on this 
fund for $200 or $300 or #1,000, whatever he 
may need, and the checks are made to read 
'on account of reservists/ You see, they 
have to have food and clothing, also, so there 
is nothing to show that this money is paid out 
for passports or anything like that. I meet this 
captain once a week or so, and tell him what 
I am doing and he gives me whatever money 
I need. You see, there must be no connection 
between him and me; no letters, no accounts, 
nothing in writing. If I were caught and were 
to say what I have told you, this captain 
would swear that he never met me in his life 
before." > 

Who this captain was became perfectly 
clear through an odd happening two days later. 
On that day, January 2, 1915, Aucher tele- 
phoned to Ruroede at his office and made an 
appointment to meet him at a quarter of one. 

21 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

This meeting will doubtless remain forever 
memorable in Ruroede's experience. 

At twelve-thirty a whole flock of special 
agents left the office of the Bureau of Investi- 
gation of the Department of Justice in the 
Park Row Building. There were nine repre- 
sentatives of the Department in the group. 
When they got near Ruroede's office they 
were joined by two others who had been shadow- 
ing Ruroede. They had located him at the 
Eastern Hotel, several blocks away, where he 
was at the moment with one of the German 
officers who planned to sail that day on the 
Norwegian Line steamer Bergensfjord with one 
of the false passports. 

Shortly after one o'clock one of the special 
agents notified the group that Ruroede had 
returned to his office and then this operative, 
and one other, went to the Customs House 
and stationed themselves at a window opposite 
Ruroede's office to wait for a signal which 
Aucher was to give when he had delivered 
the passport to Ruroede. 

When Aucher met Ruroede in the latter's 
office Ruroede's son was present, but in a few 
moments the younger man took his leave, and 
his departure was noted by one of the agents 
outside. After a few minutes' conversation 
Aucher handed Ruroede the missing passport 

22 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

and made his signal to the two men inside the 
Customs House window. These men reported 
to the main group on the street and thereupon 
the whole flock descended on Ruroede's office 
and placed both Ruroede and Aucher under 
arrest. 

They seized all of Ruroede's papers before 
they took him away, including the passport 
which Aucher had just delivered to him. 
Aucher put up a fight against his brother 
officers, so as to make Ruroede believe that his 
arrest was genuine, but was quickly subdued 
and taken away. A few minutes later Ruroede 
also was taken from his office over to the 
offices of the Bureau of Investigation, but to 
another room than Aucher. Operatives were 
left behind in Ruroede's office, and in a little 
while Ruroede's son came in. He, too, was 
arrested and taken to still another part of the 
office of the Bureau. 

Now there entered Ruroede's office a stran- 
ger, who to this day does not know that he 
unwittingly gave the officers of the United 
States Government the information that Cap- 
tain Von Papen was directly responsible for 
the passport frauds. This man entered while 
one of the operatives was busily gathering up 
the papers on Ruroede's desk. He said he 
wanted to see Mr. Ruroede. The operative 

23 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

asked him what his business was, and he re- 
plied that he had a letter to give him; and an- 
swering an inquiry, he said this letter was given 
him by Captain Von Papen, to be delivered to 
Ruroede. 

The operative calmly informed the caller 
that he was Mr. Ruroede's son and that he 
could give the letter to him. The stranger 
refused, so the operative told him that his 
"father/' Ruroede, would be in in a few min- 
utes. After the few minutes were up, he told the 
caller that he was sure that his "father" would 
not return after all, and that he had better go 
with him to where his "father" was. The 
stranger agreed and they left the office to- 
gether, the operative taking him directly to 
the office of the Bureau of Investigation. 

On the way, the stranger decided to give him 
the letter from Captain Von Papen, and also 
told him that he had come from Tokyo by way 
of San Francisco; that he was very anxious 
to get back to Germany; and that he was sorry 
he was not sailing on the boat leaving that day. 
He knew, he said, that Ruroede had a great 
many officers sailing on the ship that day, and 
asked if he thought the operative's "father" 
could make an arrangement to start him to 
Germany, too. He gave as a reason for his 
urgency the fact that he had with him eight 

24 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

trunks which contained very important papers 
in connection with the war that should be de- 
livered in Berlin without delay. 

Upon arriving at the office of the Bureau of 
Investigation the operative excused himself 
for a moment and went into another room, 
where he concocted a plan with a fellow agent 
to pose as the senior Ruroede. The operative 
then brought the stranger in and introduced 
his confederate as his father. The stranger 
gave this agent of the Department his card 
which was printed in German and, which trans- 
lated into English, read, "Wolfram von Knorr, 
Captain of Cruiser, Naval Attache, Imperial 
German Embassy, Tokyo. " 

But let us leave the guileless caller in the 
hands of the guileful agent of Justice for a 
few moments, returning to him a little later. 

Meanwhile, four of the agents from the 
Department — the minute they received the 
signal that Ruroede was under arrest — has- 
tened to the Barge Office dock and boarded 
the* revenue cutter Manhattan, on which they 
overtook the Norwegian Line steamship Ber- 
gensfjord at four o'clock, about one half hour 
after it had set sail. They were accompanied 
by several customs inspectors and ordered 
the Bergensfjord to heave to. All the male 
passengers on board were lined up. Strange 

25 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

as it may seem, they discovered four Germans, 
of such unmistakable names as Sachse, Meyer, 
Wegener, and Muller, travelling under such 
palpably English and Norwegian names as 
Wright, Hansen, Martin, and Wilson. Stranger 
still, they all turned out to be reserve officers 
in the German army. Sache proved to be 
travelling as none other than our friend " Howard 
Paul Wright," for whom Aucher had supplied 
Ruroede with the passport — as, indeed, he had 
for the three others. 

Meanwhile, Ruroede was the centre of an- 
other little drama that lasted until well toward 
midnight. He was being urged by the United 
States Assistant District Attorney to "come 
across" with the facts about his activities in 
the passport frauds, and he had stood up pretty 
well against the persuasions and hints of the 
attorney and the doubts and fears of his own 
mind. About eleven o'clock at night, as he 
was for the many'th time protesting his ig- 
norance and his innocence, another agent of 
the Bureau of Investigation walked across the 
far end of the dimly lit room — in one door and 
out another — accompanied by a fair-haired lad 
of nineteen. 

"My God!" exclaimed Ruroede, "have they 
got my son, too ? The boy knows nothing at 
all about this." 

26 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

This little ghost-walking scene, borrowed 
from "Hamlet, ' broke down Ruroede's reserve, 
and he came out with pretty much all the 
story, ending the melancholy exclamation with 
which this story began: "I thought I was 
going to get an Iron Cross; but what they ought 
to do is to pin a little tin stove on me." 

Ruroede admitted that he had met Cap- 
tain Von Papen in New York frequently and 
that Von Papen had given him money at dif- 
ferent times, but he denied that this money 
was given him for use in furnishing passports. 
On this point he stood fast, and to this day 
he has not directly implicated Von Papen in 
these frauds, though it cost him a sentence of 
three years in the Federal penitentiary at 
Atlanta, imposed just two months later. 

One thing Ruroede did confess, however, 
and in doing so he was the Hand of Fate for 
the timorous Von Wedell. Ruroede confessed 
that his assertion to Aucher, that Wedell was 
then in Barcelona, was a lie, and that the truth 
was that Wedell had recently returned from 
Cuba and was aboard the Bergensfjord! This 
confession came too late to serve that day, for 
the agents of the Bureau had by that time 
left the ship with their four prisoners and the 
Bergensfjord was out to sea. But Fate had 
nevertheless played Wedell a harsh trick, for 

27 



FORMERLY BARDINS 




TELEPHONES 



U<34 



FELIX FIEGER. Proprietor 
N YACK-ON-H U DSO N 



^ jut v^ <7Wf*if 

OL^jluLa w-*t>».*" <A^-f* 
( >, jw. -<u *.**> ~H ^1 7^ ,■ ; * 



<f\*^ ^U* 41 ^ 



U-^v^ iAwvfc&j U' tk^.c^- 






VON PAPEN AND ALBERT APPEAR AS UNNEUTRAL PLOTTERS 
This letter [of which the facsimiles are of the first and last pages] was 
written by Wedell to BernstorfF to justify his action in abandoning the 
work of gathering passports for fraudulent use. The full text follows, 



28 



^ iJjU«*tv** n & ^ ^^ <™* t**'f^ fa 



in English. It is an interesting document, not only because it reveals a 
lot of weak human nature in the agents of "German efficiency" but 
also because it definitely revealed Von Papen and Albert as principals in 
the German plots as early as three months after the war started: 



29 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

HOTEL ST. GEORGE Felix Fieger, Proprietor, Nyack-on-Hudson, December 26, 1914. 
His Excellency The Imperial German Ambassador, Count Von Bernstorff, Washington, 
D. C. Your Excellency: Allow me most obediently to put before you the following facts: 
It seems that an attempt has been made to produce the impression upon you that I pre- 
maturely abandoned my post in New York. That is not true. 

I. My work was done. At my departure I left the service well organized and worked 
out to its minutest details, in the hands of my successor, Mr. Carl Ruroede, picked out by 
myself, and, despite many warnings, still tarried for several days in New York in order 
to give him the necessary final directions and in order to hold in check the blackmailers 
thrown on my hands by the German officers until after the passage of my travellers through 
Gibraltar; in which I succeeded. Mr. Ruroede will testify to you that without my suit- 
able preliminary labors, in which I left no conceivable means untried and in which I took 
not the slightest consideration of my personal weal or woe, it would be impossible for him, 
as well as for Mr. Von Papen, to forward officers and "aspirants" in any number whatever, 
to Europe. This merit I lay claim to and the occurrences of the last days have unfortu- 
nately compelled me, out of sheer self-respect, to emphasize this to your Excellency. 

II. The motives which induced me to leave New York and which, to my astonishment, 
were not communicated to you, are the following: 

1. I knew that the State Department had, for three weeks, withheld a passport appli- 
cation forged by me. Why? 

2. Ten days before my departure I learnt from a telegram sent me by Mr. Von Papen, 
which stirred me up very much, and further through the omission of a cable, that Dr. 
Stark had fallen into the hands of the English. That gentleman's forged papers were 
liable to come back any day and could, owing chiefly to his lack of caution, easily be traced 
back to me. 

3. Officers and aspirants of the class which I had to forward over/namely the people, 
saddled me with a lot of criminals and blackmailers, whose eventual revelations were 
liable to bring about any day the explosion of the bomb. 

4. Mr. Von Papen had repeatedly urgently ordered me to hide myself. 

5. Mr. Igel had told me I was taking the matter altogether too lightly and ought to — 
for God's sake — disappear. 

6. My counsel, . . . had advised me to hastily quit New York, inasmuch as a 
local detective agency was ordered to go after the passport forgeries. 

7. It had become clear to me that eventual arrest might yet injure the worthy underi 
takings and that my disappearance would probably put a stop to all investigation in 
this direction. 

How urgent it was for me to go away is shown by the fact that, two days after my de- 
parture, detectives, who had followed up my telephone calls, hunted up my wife's harmless 
and unsuspecting cousin in Brooklyn, and subjected her to an interrogatory. 

Mr. Von Papen and Mr. Albert have told my wife that I forced myself forward to do 
this work. That is not true. When I, in Berlin, for the first time heard of this commis- 
sion, I objected to going and represented to the gentleman that my entire livelihood which 
I had created for myself in America by six years of labor was at stake therein. I have no 
other means, and although Mr. Albert told my wife my practice was not worth talking 
about, it sufficed, nevertheless, to decently support myself and wife and to build my future 
on. I have finally, at the suasion of Count Wedell, undertaken it, ready to sacrifice my 
future and that of my wife. I have, in order to reach my goal, despite infinite difficulties, 
destroyed everything that I built up here for myself and my wife. I have perhaps some- 
times been awkward, but always full of good will and I now travel back to Germany with 
the consciousness of having done my duty as well as I understood it, and of having accom- 
plished my task. 

With expressions of the most exquisite consideration, I am, your Excellency. 

Very respectfully, 

(Signed) Hans Adam von Wedell. > 

the processes of extradition were instantly put 
in motion with what strange results will in a 
few moments be made clear. 

Now we may appropriately return to the 
conference between the guileless stranger from 

30 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 






KAcjhffJ' 



THE CARD OF "THE GUILELESS1STRANGER FROM TOKYO" . 

Tokyo and the guileful agent of the Bureau of 
Investigation, in another room. The guileless 
stranger from Tokyo revealed what Ruroede 
would not disclose — and revealed it all uncon- 
sciously. He talked so frankly with "young 
Ruroede's father" that he told several most 
important things. For one, Captain Von Knorr 
declared that Captain Von Papen had sent 
him. Whereupon the pretended Ruroede asked 
him whether the fact that he was expected to 
assist Von Knorr back to Europe was known to 
the German Embassy at Washington. To this 
Von Knorr replied : 

"Of course. I just had a talk with Captain 
Von Papen right here in New York." 

"Ruroede" still insisted on having better 
proof that Von Knorr came directly from the 
Embassy, to which Von Knorr retorted that 

3i 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

"Von Papen has had sufficient dealings with 
you for you to know that any one sent by him 
to you is all right." 

Finding himself dealing with a somewhat 
reluctant saviour, Von Knorr adopted a con- 
ciliatory mood and slapped his broad hand 
several times on "Ruroede's" left breast, say- 
ing: "That chest ought to have something" — 
meaning a decoration from Berlin. 

After some verbal sparring, Von Knorr was 
allowed to drift off the scene as innocently as he 
had entered it, and he has yet to learn that his 
visit was in an office of American law and that 
his dealings were with the officers of Justice. 

But he left behind a legacy quite as valuable 
as his carefully remembered spoken words. 
This legacy was the paper which he had brought 
from Franz von Papen. This paper proved to 
be not a letter, but rather a typewritten memo- 
randum — though all doubt as to its origin was 
removed by the innocent insistence of Von 
Knorr that he had come with it from Von 
Papen's hand. 

Two most important facts emerged ulti- 
mately from a study of this innocent bit of 
paper. When Ruroede was arrested, among 
other papers taken from his desk by the officers 
of the law were numerous typewritten sheets 
containing lists of names of German officers, 

3 2 




THE OFFICIAL GERMAN PLOTTERS AT WASHINGTON 

Above, Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff; left, Capt. Franz von Papen, 

Military Attache; right, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, Naval Attache 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 




MCOBS 






Visits. 



ZtssCkNa. 



Gt*rri&&j9r& 






JM 



7W 



tro 



VON PAPEN BECOMES ACCESSORY TO A CRIME 
Though this check was made out in favor of G. Amsinck & Co., the 
German-American bankers of New York, the counterfoil bears the no- 
tation "Traveling expense v W," that is, "von Wedell." This check 
was sent him by Von Papen to enable him to escape after he had forged 
signatures to two fraudulent passports and realized that he was under 
surveillance — Von Papen thus becoming accessory after the fact to a 
crime against American laws 

their rank, and other facts about them. Ru- 
roede never would admit that these were from 
Von Papen, but that admission was made for 
him by a far more trustworthy testimony 
than his own. This testimony was an expert 
comparison, under a powerful magnifying glass 
of the typewriting on these sheets and the 
typewriting on the Von Knorr memorandum 
which had undoubtedly come from Von Papen. 

33 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

They were beyond all questioning identical. 
The same typewriter had written all By this 
little microscopic test Von Papen and the 
other ruthless underlings of Germany were 
first brought tangibly within sight of their 
ultimate expulsion from this country, for crimes 









TWO OF RUROEDE'S VISITORS' CREDENTIALS 
These cards were presented by two German officers in search of frau- 
dulent passports. They were sent by Von Papen and Mudra (German 
Consul at Philadelphia), who both frequently directed such officers to 
Ruroede for this purpose 

34 



THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 

of which the passport frauds were the least 
odious. 

The other pregnant fact about the Von 
Knorr memorandum was that the eyes of Jus- 
tice rested on the name of Werner Horn and 
lingered long enough to fix that name in mem- 
ory. Here first swam into its ken the man who 
tried to destroy the international bridge at 
Vanceboro, Maine, and whose story is one of the 
most romantic and adventurous of all the Ger- 
man plotters ! 

One last touch in this drama: A few moments 
ago we left Von Wedell — ambitious, timorous 
Von Wedell — on the high seas bound for Norway. 
But Fate was after him. Ruroede's moment 
of weakness — his moment of pique, when he 
swore he would not shoulder all this bitterness 
alone — had set her on his trail. A cable mes- 
sage to London, a wireless from the Admiralty, 
and then — this entry in the logbook of the 
Bergensfjord for Monday, January n, 1915: 

All male first and second class passengers were gathered 
in the first-class dining saloon and their nationality in- 
quired into. 

About noon, the boarding officer of the Cruiser 

(English) went back and reported to his ship. About 
0:45 P. M. he came over with orders again to take off 
six German stowaways and two suspected passengers. 
These passengers were according to ship's berth list as 
follows : 

35 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

i. Rosato Sprio, Mexican, Destination Bergen, Cabin 
71, second-class. . . . 

Rosato Sprio admitted after close examination to be 
H. A. Wedell. Claimed to be a citizen of the United 
States. . . . 

Dr. Rasmus Bjornstad claimed to be a Norwegian. . . 

As both passengers apparently were travelling under 
false pretense, the Captain did not feel justified to protest 
against the detention of the two passengers. These 
were accordingly . . . taken off" and put on board 
the Auxiliary Cruiser . 

Unhappy Wedell! "The Cruiser "was 

a ship that never made port. Wedell's high 
connections in the German Foreign Office could 
not save him from the activities of the high 
officials of the German Admiralty. A U-boat 

fired a torpedo into "the Cruiser "and 

sent her to the bottom with Rosato Sprio, 
alias H. A. Wedell, aboard. 

Exeunt Wedell and Ruroede. 

Enter Werner Horn. 



36 



CHAPTER II 

The Inside Story of Werner Horn 

and 

The First Glimpse of the Ship Bombs 

THE real mystery in the case of Werner 
Horn is this: Who was the man in Lower 

3? (If he had only known !) Because, 

except for this one missing fact, the story of 
Werner Horn is as clear as day. It is the story 
of a brave man, too honest to lie with a straight 
face, who was used by the villainous Von 
Bernstorff and Von Papen only after they had 
lied without a quiver, on at least three vital 
points, to him. He meant to fight the enemy 
of his country as a soldier fights, and they 
cynically sent him on an errand which they 
meant should be an errand of miscellaneous 
crime, including murder. He was to go to a 
felon's death for this one of the many devilish 
plots they were concocting against American 
lives, while they lived in luxury in Washington 
and lied with smiling faces to the representatives 
of the people whose hospitality they were 
betraying. There have been few more despic- 

37 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

ably outrageous, more cold-blooded crimes 
than this — except that other one (also of their 
devising) in the ship bombs case; but that is 
another story, to be told later. 

The story of Werner Horn begins in Guate- 
mala. Horn was the manager of a coffee 
plantation at Moka. He had seen ten years 
of service in the German Army when, in 1909, 
he got a furlough from the authorities in Cologne 
permitting him to go to Central America for 
two years. This furlough writes him down 
as an "Oberleutnant on inactive service/' That 
means, roughly, that he was a first lieutenant 
of the German Army, out of uniform but sub- 
ject to call ahead of all other classes of men liable 
for military duty. Then came the war. 

Two hours after word of "The Day" reached 
Moka, Werner Horn was packed and on his 
way to Germany. From Belize he sailed to 
Galveston, where he spent two weeks looking 
in vain for passage. Then on to New York, 
where he tried for a month to sail. Finding 
that impossible, he went to Mexico City and 
there learned that another man in Guatemala 
had his job. He had just found another one, 
on an American coffee plantation at Salto de 
Aguas, in Chiapas, and was about to go there by 
launch from Frontera, when he got a card 
telling him to try again to get to Germany. 

38 



Bazirksk^mandY^ ' -r 
16DK.1909 jyr? " 

Doom _, 



Cdln 





% lufanterie-BrysMte Z^T^u^t^' 







HORN'S APPLICATION FOR A FURLOUGH 
Issued by the military authorities of Cologne, on the Rhine near the 
Dutch border, permitting him to leave Germany for two years. The fur- 
lough was later extended, as Horn was gone nearly five years before the 
war broke out 

39 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

By December 26th he was back in New Orleans, 
and a few days later he was lodging in the Arietta 
Hotel on Staten Island. 

Now began a series of conferences with Von 
Papen. Horn was afire with honest zeal to 
serve the Fatherland, and Von Papen was 
unscrupulous as to how he did it. When he 
could not get passage for him back to Ger- 
many, Von Papen determined to use this 
blond giant (Horn is six feet two) for another 
purpose. He then unpacked his kit of lies. 

A little after the midnight of Saturday, 
December 29, 1914, a big German in rough 
clothes and cloth cap entered the Grand 
Central Station carrying a cheap brown suit- 
case. A porter seized it from him with an 
expansive smile. The smile faded long before 
they reached Car 34 of the one o'clock New 
Haven train to Boston. "Boss, yoh sho' has 
got a load o' lead in theah," was his puff- 
ing comment as he got his tip. The German 
grinned, and a few minutes later swung the 
suitcase carelessly against the steam-pipes under 
Lower 3, and clambered to the upper. A 
suitcase full of dynamite — and the man in 
Lower 3 slept on. 

Several people on the Maine Central train 
that left North Station, Boston, at eight 
o'clock the next morning, afterward identified 

40 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 



<dU/ 








, JSP { 

***• Life 




gP^- ^^ j, 


^ o o ' 

I ° 


MAINE CENTRAL RAILROAD 


AND 


CONNECTIONS 



WERNER HORN'S PLAN OF ESCAPE 
The pencilled line left from Vanceboro and down to Princeton was 
Horn's own mark upon the map of the route by which he hoped to escape 
after he had blown up the international bridge. He did not know the 
country and hence did not calculate upon the wilderness he was planning 
to traverse, unguided, in the dead of a New England winter. The pen- 
cilled ring around St. John, N. B., gives the cue to his purpose in blowing 
up the bridge — St. John was a port from which the war supplies from 
America to Great Britain could be shipped for use against the Germans 

the big blond German who left it at Vance- 
boro, Maine, at six forty-five that evening. 
None of them recalled his baggage. 

But trust the people in a country town to 
catalogue a stranger. Horn went directly from 
the train about his errand; which was reckon- 

4i 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

ing without the Misses Hunter and the twelve- 
year-old Armstrong boy. They saw him toiling 
through the snow, marked the unusual weight 
of his suitcase from the way he carried it, 
saw him hide it in the woodpile by the siding 
— and then they talked. Soon Mr. Hunter 
hurried to the Immigration Station and told an 
inspector there about the suspicious stranger. 
The inspector hurried down the railroad track 
and met Horn returning from the international 
bridge that spans the St. Croix River a few hun- 
dred feet away. He asked where the stranger 
was going. Horn's reply was to ask the way to a 
hotel. When his name was next demanded he 
gave it as Olaf Hoorn, and said he was a Dane. 
The inspector then asked what he was in town 
for, and Horn said he was going to buy a farm. 
And, finally, the inspector asked him where 
he came from. When Horn explained in detail 
that he had come from New York via Boston 
the inspector, with a true legal mind, decided 
that he "had no jurisdiction," and let it go 
at that. His concern in life was with "immi- 
grants" from Canada — and this man had proved 
that he had come from "an interior point." 
Hence he could do nothing officially, for the 
moment. 

But the Misses Hunter's sharp eyes saw the 
stranger, after this interview, recover the suit- 

42 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

case from the woodpile before going on to 
Tague's Vanceboro Exchange Hotel for the 
night. The host at the hotel was not on duty 
when Horn registered, and never saw his 
baggage, but his mother, who happened to have 
occasion to enter Horn's room in his absence on 
the following Monday, noticed the suitcase, 
tried to lift it, and wondered how any one could 
carry it. Horn was a marked man from the 
moment he arrived in the town. 

Evidently he sensed the suspicions he aroused, 
for he made no effort to proceed about his 
business that night, or the next. But shortly 
before eight o'clock on Monday night Horn 
gave up his room and said he was going to 
Boston on the eight o'clock train. He took 
his suitcase and disappeared. Instead of going 
to the station, he hid out in the woods until 
the last train for the night should go by. At 
eleven he was encountered in the railroad cut 
above the bridge by an employee of the Maine 
Central Railroad, who got such unsatisfactory 
answers to his questions that he talked the 
matter over with a fellow workman in the round- 
house, though without results. So Werner 
Horn marched out alone upon the bridge — 
alone except for his cigar and his suitcase, the 
spirit of the Fatherland upon him and the ly- 
ing words of Von Papen in his ears. 

43 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

He had need of the fire of patriotism to warm 
his blood and to steel his courageous spirit. 
It was a black winter night. The mercury 
was at thirty degrees below zero, the wind 
was blowing at eighty miles an hour, the ice 
was thick upon the cross-ties beneath his 
stumbling feet. The fine snow, like grains of 
flying sand, cut his skin in the gale. 

But Werner Horn was a patriot and a brave 
man. Von Papen had told him that over these 
rails flowed a tide of death to Germans — not 
only guns and shells, but dum-dum bullets 
that added agony to death. He must do his 
bit to save his fellow soldiers; must help to 
stop the tide. Destroy this bridge, and for a 
time at least the cargoes would be kept from 
St. John and Halifax. It was a short bridge, 
but a strategic one, and the most accessible. 
So Horn stumbled on. He must get beyond 
the middle. Von Papen had not urged it, but 
Werner Horn had balked about this business 
from the first — not through lack of courage 
(he would go as a soldier upon the enemy's 
territory and there fire his single shot at any 
risk against their millions), but he would not 
commit a crime for anybody, not even for the 
Kaiser; nor would he trespass on the soil of 
hospitable America. Hence on each sleeve he 
wore the colours of his country: three bands, 

44 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

of red and white and black. Von Papen had 
beguiled him into thinking these transformed 
him from a civilian to a soldier. Twice as he 
struggled through the darkness he slipped and 
fell, barely saving himself from death on the 
ice below. Each time he clung doggedly to 
his suitcase full of dynamite. 

Suddenly a whistle shrieked behind him, and 
in a moment the glaring eyes of an express 
train's locomotive shone upon him. Horn 
clutched with one hand at a steel rod of the 
bridge and swung out over black nothingness, 
holding the suitcase safe behind him with the 
other. The train thundered by, and left him 
painfully to recover his uncertain footing on 
the bridge. The second of Von Papen's lies 
had been disproven. 

He had promised Horn that the last train 
for the night would have been gone at this 
hour, for Horn had said he would do nothing 
that would put human lives in peril. But 
Horn thought only that Von Papen had mis- 
understood the schedules. 

A few moments after he had got this shock, 
another whistle screamed at him from the 
Canadian shore, and again he made his quick, 
precarious escape by hanging out above the 
river by one hand and one foot. He now decided 
that all schedules had been put awry, and that 

45 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

he must change his plans to be sure of not 
endangering human beings. To accomplish this, 
he cut off and threw away most of the fifty- 
minute fuse that he had brought along, and 
left only enough to burn three minutes. No 
train would come sooner than this, and then the 
explosion would warn everybody of the danger. 

In doing this, Horn deliberately cut himself 
off from hope of escaping capture. He had 
planned such an escape— an ingenious plan, 
too, except that it was traced on a railroad 
time-table map of the Maine [woods in winter 
by a strange German fresh from the tropics. 
He had meant to walk back one station west- 
ward, then cut across the open country to the 
end of a branch line railroad, and then ride 
back to Boston on another line than that on 
which he had come east to Vanceboro. It was 
a clever scheme, except that it missed all the 
essentials, such as the thirty miles of trackless 
woods, the snow feet-deep upon the level, the 
darkness of winter nights, and the deadly cold. 
Still, Horn childishly believed it feasible, and 
he did a brave and honourable thing to throw 
it overboard rather than to cause the death of 
innocent people. 

He fixed the dynamite against a girder 
of the bridge above the Canadian bank of the 
river, adjusted the explosive cap, and touched 

4 6 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

his cigar to the end of the three-minute fuse. 
Then he stumbled back across the gale-swept, 
icy bridge, made no effort to escape, and walked 
back into the hotel in Vanceboro, with both 
hands frozen, as well as his ears, his feet, and 
his nose. A moment after he entered the 
hotel the dynamite exploded with a report 
that broke the windows in half the houses 
in the town and twisted rods and girders on 
the bridge sufficiently to make it unsafe but 
not enough to ruin it. 

Everybody in Vanceboro was aroused. Host 
Tague, of the Exchange Hotel, leaped from 
his bed and looked out of the window. See- 
ing nothing, he struck a light and looked at 
his watch, which said 1:10, and then he hurried 
into the hall, headed for the cellar, to see if 
his boiler had exploded. In the hall he faced 
the bathroom. There stood Werner Horn, 
who mildly said "Good morning " to his 
astonished host. Tague returned the greeting 
and went back to get his clothes on. He had 
surmised the truth, and Horn's connection 
with it. When he came back out into the hall, 
Horn was still in the bathroom, and said: 
"I freeze my hands." Small wonder, after 
five hours in that bitter gale. Tague opened 
the bathroom window and gave him some 
snow to rub on his frozen fingers, and then 

47 



Rwv~ 



& . X-. JCC.-JK. .-^> ,*w^ ^ 



■ tr**-^T-7S*-j, 










zr~ 



WERNER HORN'S COMMISSION IN THE GERMAN ARMY 
Found in an ironbound trunk in his room in the Arietta Hotel on 
Staten Island. His position was approximately that of a first 

4 8 



^ 







j&£* >*£***« 'Cwe^6e^^//fs/xsw,'& 



« ***> £-*£*//* V s - fCCt'/ZCdsC' 




lieutenant, returned to civil life, but of the class first subject to duty 
m tne event of war 



49 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

hurried to the bridge to see the damage. He 
found enough to make him press on to the station 
on the Canadian side, and then come back 
to Vanceboro, so that trains would be held 
from attempting to cross it. 

When he got back to his hotel, Horn asked 
to have again the room he had given up that 
evening. Tague had let it to another guest, 
but gave Horn a room on the third floor. There 
the German turned in and went to sleep. 

Meanwhile, human nature as artless as 
Werner Horn's was at work in Vanceboro. 
The chief officer of law thereabouts was " John 
Doe," a deputy sheriff, chief fish and game 
warden, and licensed detective for the state 
of Maine. His later testimony doubtless would 
have had a sympathetic reader in the Man 
in Lower 3 (if only he had known): "I was 
asleep at my home, which is about three or 
four hundred feet from the bridge; heard a 
noise about 1:10 a.m., which I thought was 
an earthquake, a collision of engines, or a 
boiler explosion in the heating plant. The 
noise disturbed me so that I could not get to 
sleep. (And the Man in Lower 3 slept on!) 
I got up in the morning at about half-past 
five; met a man who said they had blown up 
the bridge." 

But while Mr. Doe was about his disturbed 

50 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

slumbers, the superintendent of the Maine 
Central Railroad was making a Sheridan's 
Ride through the night by special train from 
Mattawamkeag, fifty miles away. , He, at least, 
was on the job — he had brought along a claim 
agent of the road, to take care of \ damage 
suits. When |they reached the Vanceboro 
station, they sent for Mr. Doe, and when he 
arrived at seven o'clock, Canada also was 
represented by two constables in uniform. This 
being a case for Law and not for Commerce, 
Mr. Doe took charge. He told the others 
that the first thing to do was to cover all the 
stations by telegraph and arrest all suspicious 
parties. Then he led his posse to the hotel. 

There Mr. Tague told them about the Ger- 
man peacefully asleep upstairs. He led them 
to the upper floor and pointed out the room, 
but went no farther, as he thought there might 
be shooting. His sister, being of the same 
mind, sought the cellar. Doe knocked upon 
the door. 

"What do you want?" called Werner Horn. 

"Open the door," commanded Doe. 

The door swung open, and the big German 
sat back on his bed. Then he saw the Cana- 
dian uniforms and jumped for his coat. Doe 
shoved him back, and one of the constables 
got the coat, and the revolver in it. When 

Si 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Doe told Horn he was an American officer, 
Horn stopped resisting and said: 

"That's all right, then. I thought you 
were all Canadians. I wouldn't harm any one 
from here." 

Doe handcuffed Horn to his own arm and 
took him to the Immigration Station to make 
an inquiry. Here Horn told a straightforward 
story, but with one embellishment that caused 
more excitement than all the rest, and that 
ultimately revealed his own character in its 
clearest light. This story was that he had 
not brought the dynamite in his suitcase, 
but that, by prearrangement, he had carried 
the empty suitcase to the bridge and there 
met an Irishman from Canada, to whom he 
gave the password "Tommy," and that this 
Irishman had given him the explosive and 
then disappeared. 

"Tommy" immediately became a sensation 
who overshadowed Horn himself. Canadian 
officers scoured the Canadian shore for days, 
looking for this dangerous renegade, and Amer- 
icans were as zealous on our side of the river. 

But Horn himself was in a dangerous posi- 
tion. Lynching bees were discussed on both 
sides of the river, and probably only prompt 
action by the local authorities prevented one. 
Both to hold Horn for more serious prosecution 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

and to get him out of peril, he was charged 
in the local police court with malicious mischief 
in breaking the window glass in one of the 
houses in Vanceboro; he pleaded guilty and 
was at once removed to Machias, the county 
seat, to serve thirty days in jail. Five days 
after the explosion, the Department of Justice 
had Horn's signed confession, taken in person 
by the Chief of the Bureau of Investigation. 

It was in the giving of this confession that 
Werner Horn revealed himself most fully as 
a patriot and a gentleman, and, all uncon- 
sciously, revealed that the cynical Von Papen 
was a liar, a cold-blooded criminal, and, for 
the second time in the first months of the war, 
the secret hand behind the violations of 
American neutrality instigated through him 
and Bernstorff at the behest of the Imperial 
German Government. 

When the government agent saw Horn in 
jail at Machias, and warned him that what he 
said would be used against him in proceed- 
ings for his extradition into Canada, or 
prosecution here, Horn told the same straight- 
forward story, with the same embellishment 
about "Tommy." "I met a white man," 
so Horn said, "whom I had never seen before, 
but who was about 35 or 40 years of age 
clean shaven — ' Tommy' — I was told to say 

S3 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Tommy' when I met him — I cannot say 
anything that would involve the consulate 
or the embassy — Germany is at war — I re- 
ceived, however, an order which was from one 
who had a right to give it, a verbal order only — 
received it two or three days before leaving 
New York for Vanceboro." 

Later he said: "I cannot speak of the rank 
of the man who gave the orders — I cannot 
even say that he was an officer. No one was 
present when the orders were given me in 
New York City. I cannot tell more because 
it was a matter for the Fatherland. I would 
rather go to Canada [where he knew they 
wanted to lynch him] than to tell more about 
my orders — this would be Impossible — at least 
until after the war is over." 

Horn admitted he had met Von Papen sev- 
eral times at the German Club in New York 
City, but no art could compel him to admit 
that he had got his orders from him. But, 
as the agent noticed, his manner gave his 
words the lie; and whenever he tried to tell 
anything that was inaccurate he did so with 
great difficulty and embarrassment. But find- 
ing him determined, at whatever risk, to 
withhold this information, and determined, 
too, to stick to the absurd story about "Tom- 
my," the agent wrote out by t}^pewriter a 

54 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

statement of the facts as he had given them 
for Horn to sign. 

Horn read the statement over and said that 
he would sign it. Then the agent took out his 
pen, added a few items of new information, 
and wrote these words : 

"I certify on my honour as a German officer 
that the foregoing statements are true," and 
handed Horn the pen to sign it. Horn read 
the last sentence and seemed nonplussed. 
He turned back through the pages of the 
statement, blushed, scratched his head, and 
finally grinned up at the agent with the one 
word : 

"Tommy." 

The agent grinned in turn: 

"You mean it's all right except for Tommy?" 

"Yes." 

Horn would not sign a lie and pledge his 
honour it was truth. A close scrutiny of the cut 
on page 57 will show where the period after 
the word "true" has been erased, so that the 
sentence could go on to say, before he signed it, 
"except as to Tommy' — that I did not buy 
the nitro-glycerine but received it in New 
York and took it with me in the suitcase. I 
cannot say from whom I received it. Wer- 
ner Horn." 

If Werner Horn had been less honest, less 

55 



V' : Fb~-*'%,/?/S < Machias, ?Iain«, 

Feb., 7, 1915. 
I ,~~ Werner Horn, after having been advised that, my extradition 
to Canada has been a3ked by the Governmant of Great Britain and 
that anything I may say will or may beused against me in an extra- 
dition proceeding by the United States or in a prosecution by the 
United States if it shall be found that I have violated any of the 
laws ojf that country and -that I may decline to talk at all or to 
answer any particular questions do voluntsaly, willling and without 
any promises other than ihat my case will be de&l$. with by the 
United States' fairly, impartially and in accordance with the law* 
make this statement. 

I am thirty-seven years of age, a citizen of Germany and* at 
the .outbreak of the war was the manager of a coffee plantation in 
duatamala^ that I am an Over-lieutenant in the German p e o e rvo army , i/v«*» 
v *J^naving had ten years active service in the German army, that two- 
hours after receiving the call to return for army service' I was on 
my way. I , wenSL'fr'o'm Guatama'la to Galveston, Texas, in August, 1914, 
remained there fourteeen days, proceeded to New York City, waited 
there four week3 trying to get a steamer to return to Germany, 
found that this was impossible, started to Mexlcao, remaining, en 
route 16 days in San Antonio, Texas, that in MexiceoCity I received 
a card from .the coffeeeplantation in Guatamala that another man had my 
position, th?.t I. .secured a position on an American coffee plantation, 
that about four hours before going ^>«» Frontera H received<?a card ^>- 
that all German officers should proceed to Germany, that I returned 
on the same launch <?n which i had intended to go -k« Frontera, -saw 
frfte Q je rman c o n etrib— in-V a r a— Q&&&, sailed on a Norwegian steamer from 
Vera Cijua. to New Orleans, was on the sea on Christmas day, arrived 
in. New Orleans December 26, 1914, proceeded at once to New York by 
train, reported to the German Consul' there either$BaA. S& or S«, 
asked Captain -on Papen if it. was possible to go to Germany, be sCftad 
that it was impossible-, that l stayed at the Arietta Hotel on 
Arietta Street, ortaten Island-, three otr four weeks and then went 
"to Yaiiceboro, :.:aine, 

WERNER HORN'S CONFESSION 
In which he unintentionally revealed the guilty purposes of Von 
Papen to violate American neutrality and commit a crime against 
human life, and which Horn refused to sign upon his "honour as 



56 



j^U.^ ^Aa-JL O^^rv*. ^sJ^-l^lAX^M 

1 * 



-CC 



a German officer" until it was altered to remove the fantastic tale 
about a confederate in Canada. By looking closely the erasure of 
the period after the word "true" can be seen, made to permit this 
correction to be added 

57 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

humane, the black wickedness of his Imperial 
masters would have been less clearly visible. 
He was the one who was punctilious to respect 
American neutrality — while they flouted it. 
He was the one who risked his own life rather 
than imperil others — while they sat snug in 
Washington devising means to place on the 
rudders of American ships the bombs that 
would add another horrid chapter to their 
crimes. A mere criminal at Vanceboro might 
have been accused of exceeding their criminal 
instructions — Werner Horn refused to carry 
out the instructions they had given. 

One cannot forbear to publish here a humor 
ous incident in this case, in no way related to 
its immediate currents, but so characteristic 
of the American attitude in general at that 
time. Here was a drama of international 
politics, fertilizing the germs of war — the seeds 
of our own entrance into the conflict, with its 
present expenditures of billions in treasure and 
its prospective expenditure of human blood 
and tears. Into this epic picture walks a 
Yankee trader with a bottle of liniment for 
frost bite in his hand, and asks for a "testi- 
monial. 55 It is significant, because it was a 
faithful miniature of America at large in 
February, 191 5 — asleep to the perils of its 
"isolation, 55 but wide awake to the main 

58 



STORY OF WERNER HORN 

chance in war-begotten trade. Well could Von 
Papen and Von Bernstorff, well could the 
Kaiser in Berlin, afford to smile a little longer, 
and marvel again at a people still "so stupid." 
But the American Government was on still 
other German plotters' trails. They were not 
asleep, nor stupid. Even while they went 
through the long, legal processes in which 
German intrigue tried in vain to save Werner 
Horn from delivery to Canadian justice (and 
Horn was supplied with good counsel and 
every facility for making his defence), among 
the Yankee traders there was alert activity 
as well as dormant patriotism. The way in 
which the Department of Justice, through these 
merchants, lawyers, doctors, men of the "main 
chance/ 5 soon had a network of special agents 
in every city, town, and hamlet in the country, 
is one of the cleverest pieces of American 
Government detective work born of the war. 



59 



CHAPTER III 
Robert Fay and the Ship Bombs 

ROBERT FAY landed in New York on 
April 23, 1915. He landed in jail just 
six months and one day later — on October 24th. 
In those six months he slowly perfected one of 
the most infernal devices that ever emerged 
from the mind of man. He painfully had it 
manufactured piece by piece. With true Ger- 
man thoroughness he covered his trail at every 
point — excepting one. And five days after he 
had aroused suspicion at that point, he and 
his entire group of fellow conspirators were in 
jail. The agents of American justice who put 
him there had unravelled his whole ingenious 
scheme and had evidence enough to have sent 
him to the penitentiary for life if laws since 
passed had then been in effect. 

Only the mind that conceived the sinking of 
the Lusitania could have improved upon the 
devilish device which Robert Fay invented 
and had ready for use when he was arrested. 
It was a box containing forty pounds of tri- 
nitrotoluol, to be fastened to the rudder post of 

60 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

a vessel, and so geared to the rudder itself 
that its oscillations would slowly release the 
catch of a spring, which would then drive 
home the firing pin and cause an explosion 
that would instantly tear off the whole stern 
of the ship, sinking it in mid-ocean in a few 
minutes. Experts in mechanics and experts 
in explosives and experts in shipbuilding all 
tested the machine, and all agreed that it was 
perfect for the work which Fay had planned 
that it should do. 

Fay had three of these machines completed, 
he had others in course of construction, he 
had bought and tested the explosive to go 
into them, he had cruised New York harbour in 
a motor boat and proved by experience that 
he could attach them undetected where he 
wished, and he had the names and sailing dates 
of the vessels that he meant to sink without 
a trace. Only one little link that broke — and 
the quick and thorough work of American 
justice — robbed him of another Iron Cross 
besides the one he wore. That link — but that 
comes later in the story. 

Fay and his device came straight from the 
heart of the German Army, with the approval 
and the money of his government behind him. 
He, like Werner Horn, came originally from 
Cologne; but they were very different men. 

61 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Where Horn was almost childishly simple, 
Fay's mind was subtle and quick to an extraor- 
dinary degree. Where Horn had been hu- 
mane to the point of risking his life to save 
others, Fay had spent months in a cold-blooded 
solution of a complex problem in destruction 
that he knew certainly involved a horrible 
death for dozens, and more likely hundreds, 
of helpless human beings. Horn refused to 
swear to a lie even where the lie was a matter of 
no great moment. Fay told at his trial a story 
so ingenious that it would have done credit to 
a novelist and would have been wholly con- 
vincing if other evidence had not disproved 
the substance of it. The truth of the case 
runs like this: 

Fay was in Germany when the war broke 
out and was sent to the Vosges Mountains in 
the early days of the conflict. Soon men were 
needed in the Champagne sector, and Fay was 
transferred to that front. Here he saw some 
of the bitterest fighting of the war, and here 
he led a detachment of Germans in a surprise 
attack on a trench full of Frenchmen in su- 
perior force. His success in this dangerous 
business won him an Iron Cross of the second 
class. During these days the superiority of the 
Allied artillery over the German caused the 
Germans great distress, and they became very 

62 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

bitter when they realized, from a study of the 
shells that exploded around them, how much 
of this superiority was due to the material 
that came from the United States for use by 
the French and British guns. Fay's ingenious 
mind formed a scheme to stop this supply, and 
he put his plan before his superior officers. The 
result was that, in a few weeks, he left the army 
and left Germany, armed with passports and 
$3,500 in American money, bound for the 
United States on the steamer Rotterdam. He 
reached New York on April 23, 191 5. 

One of Fay's qualifications for the task he 
had set for himself was his familiarity with the 
English language and with the United States. 
He had come to America in 1902, spending a 
few months on a farm in Manitoba and then 
going on to Chicago, where he had worked 
for several years for the J. I. Case Machinery 
Company, makers of agricultural implements. 
During these years, Fay was taking an extended 
correspondence school course in electrical and 
steam engineering, so that altogether he had 
good technical background for the events of 
1915. In 1906, he went back to Germany. 

What he may have lacked in technical 
equipment, Fay made up by the first connec- 
tion he made when he reached New York in 
1915. The first man he looked up was Walter 

63 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Scholz, his brother-in-law, who had been in 
this country for four years and who was a civil 
engineer who had worked here chiefly as a 
draftsman — part of the time for the Lacka- 
wanna Railroad — and who had studied me- 
chanical engineering on the side. When Fay 
arrived, Scholz had been out of a job in his own 
profession and was working on a rich man's 
estate in Connecticut. Fay, armed with 
plenty of money and his big idea, got Scholz 
to go into the scheme with him, and the two 
were soon living together in a boarding house 
at 28 Fourth Street, Weehawken, across the 
river from uptown New York. 

To conceal the true nature of their opera- 
tions they hired a small building on Main 
Street and put a sign over the door announcing 
themselves in business as "The Riverside 
Garage." They added verisimilitude to this 
scheme by buying a second-hand car in bad 
condition and dismantling it, scattering the 
parts around the room so that it would look as 
if they were engaged in making repairs. Every 
once in a while they would shift these parts 
about so as to alter the appearance of the 
place. However, they did not accept any 
business — whenever a man took the sign at its 
face value and came in asking to have work 
done, Fay or Scholz would take him to a near-by 

64 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

saloon and buy him a few drinks and pass him 
along, referring him to some other garage. 

The most of their time they spent about the 
real business in hand. They took care to 
have the windows of their room in the board- 
ing house heavily curtained to keep out prying 
eyes, and here, under a student lamp, they 
spent hours over mechanical drawings which 
were afterward produced in evidence at the 
trial of their case. The mechanism that Fay 
had conceived was carefully perfected on paper, 
and then they confronted the task of getting 
the machinery assembled. Some of the parts 
were standard — that is, they could be bought 
at any big hardware store. Others, however, 
were peculiar to this device and had to be made 
to order from the drawings. They had the 
tanks made by a sheet-metal worker named 
Ignatz Schiering, at 344 West 42nd Street, 
New York. Scholz went to him with a draw- 
ing, telling him that it was for a gasolene tank 
for a motor boat. Scholz made several trips 
to the shop to supervise some of the details of 
the construction and once to order more tanks 
of a new size and shape. 

At the same time Scholz went to Bernard 
McMillan, doing business under the name of 
McMillan & Werner, 81 Centre Street, New 
York, to have him make special kinds of 

65 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

wheels and gears for the internal mechanism 
of the bomb, from sketches which Scholz 
supplied. At odd times between June 10th 
and October 20th McMillan was working on 
these things and delivered the last of them to 
Scholz just a few days before he was arrested. 
In the meanwhile, Fay was taking care of 
the other necessary elements of his scheme. 
Besides the mechanism of the bomb, he had 
to become familiar with the shipping in the 
port of New York, and he had to get the ex- 
plosive with which to charge the bomb. For 
the former purpose he and Scholz bought a 
motor boat — a 28-footer — and in this they 
cruised about New York harbour at odd times, 
studying the docks at which ships were being 
loaded with supplies for the Allies and cal- 
culating the best means and time for placing 
the bombs on the rudder posts of these ships. 
Fay finally determined by experience that 
between two and three o'clock in the morn- 
ing was the best time. The watchmen on 
board the ships were at that hour most likely to, 
be asleep or the night dark enough so that 
he could work in safety. He made some ac- 
tual experiments in fastening the empty tanks 
to the rudder posts, and found that it was 
perfectly easy to do so. His scheme was to 
fasten them just above the water line on a 

66 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

ship while it was light, so that when it was 
loaded they were submerged and all possibility 
of detection was removed. 

The getting of explosives was, however, the 
most difficult part of Fay's undertaking. This 
was true not only because he was here most 
likely to arouse suspicion, but also because 
of his relative lack of knowledge of the thing 
he was dealing with. He did know enough, 
however, to begin his search for explosives in 
the least suspicious field, and it was only as 
he became ambitious to produce a more power- 
ful effect that he came to grief. 

The material he decided to use at first was 
chlorate of potash. This substance in itself 
is so harmless that it is an ingredient of tooth 
powders and is used commonly in other ways. 
When, however, it is mixed with any substance 
high in carbons, such as sugar, sulphur, char- 
coal, or kerosene, it becomes an explosive of con- 
siderable power. Fay set about to get some of 
the chlorate. 

But it is now time to get acquainted with 
Fay's fellow conspirators, and to follow them 
through the drama of human relationships 
that led to Fay's undoing. All these men were 
Germans — some of them German-Americans — 
and each in his own way was doing the work 
of the Kaiser in this country. Herbert Kienzle 

6 7 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

was a dealer in clocks with a store on Park 
Place, in New York. He had learned the 
business in his father's clock factory deep in 
the Black Forest in Germany and had come to 
this country years ago to go into the same 
business, getting his start by acting as agent 
for his father's factory over here. After the 
war broke out he had become obsessed with 
the wild tales which German propaganda had 
spread in this country about dum-dum bullets 
being shipped back for use against the soldiers 
of the Fatherland. He had brooded on the 
3ubject, had written very feelingly about it 
to the folks at home, and had prepared for 
distribution in the United States a pamphlet 
denouncing this traffic. Fay had heard of Kienzle 
before leaving Germany, and soon after he 
reached New York he got in touch with him as 
a man with a fellow feeling for the kind of work 
he was undertaking to do. 

One of the first things in Fay's carefully 
worked-out plan was to locate a place to which 
he could quietly retire when his work of de- 
struction should be done — a place where he 
felt he could be safe from suspicion. After a 
talk with Kienzle he decided that Lush's 
Sanatorium, at Butler, N. J., would serve the 
purpose. This sanatorium was run by Ger- 
mans and Kienzle was well known there. 

68 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

Acting on a prearranged plan with Kienzle, 
Fay went to Butler and was met at the station 
by a man named Bronkhorst, who was in 
charge of the grounds at the sanatorium. 
They identified each other by prearranged 
signals and Fay made various arrangements, 
some of which are of importance later in the 
story. 

Another friend of Kienzle's was Max Brie- 
tung, a young German employed by his uncle, 
E. N. Brietung, who was in the shipping busi- 
ness in New York. Young Brietung was con- 
sequently in a position to know at first hand 
about the movements of ships out of New 
York harbour. Brietung supplied Fay with the 
information he needed regarding which ships 
Fay- should elect to destroy. But first Brietung 
made himself useful in another way. 

Fay asked Kienzle how he could get some 
chlorate of potash, and Kienzle asked his young 
friend Brietung if he could help him out. 
Brietung said he could, and went at once to 
another German who was operating in New 
York ostensibly as a broker in copper under 
the name of Carl L. Oppegaard. 

It is just as well to get better acquainted 
with Oppegaard because he was a vital link 
in Fay's undoing. His real name was Paul 
Siebs and for the purpose of this story he might 

69 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

as well be known by that name. Siebs had 
also been in this country in earlier days and 
during his residence in Chicago, from 1910 
to 191 3, he had gotten acquainted with young 
Brietung. He, too, had gone back to Germany 
before the war, but soon after it began he had 
come back to the United States under his false 
name, ostensibly as an agent of an electrical 
concern in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the pur- 
pose of buying copper. He frankly admitted 
later that this copper was intended for re- 
export to Germany to be used in the manu- 
facture of munitions of war. He did not have 
much success in his enterprise and he was 
finally forced to make a living from hand to 
mouth by small business transactions of almost 
any kind. He could not afford a separate 
office, so he rented desk room in the office of 
the Whitehall Trading Company, a small sub- 
sidiary of the Raymond-Hadley Corporation. 
His desk was in the same room with the mana- 
ger of the company, Carl L. Wettig. 

When Brietung asked Siebs to buy him 
some chlorate of potash Siebs was delighted at 
the opportunity to make some money and 
immediately undertook the commission. He 
had been instructed to get a small amount, 
perhaps 200 pounds. He needed money so 
badly, however, that he was very glad to find 

70 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

that the smallest kegs of the chlorate of potash 
were 112 pounds each, and he ordered three 
kegs. He paid for them with money supplied 
by Brietung and took a delivery slip. Ulti- 
mately this delivery slip was presented by Scholz 
who appeared one day with a truck and driver 
and took the chemical away. 

Fay and Scholz made some experiments 
with the chlorate of potash and Fay decided 
it was not strong enough to serve his purpose. 
He then determined to try dynamite. Again 
he wished to avoid suspicion and this time, 
after consultation with Kienzle, he recalled 
Bronkhorst down at the Lush Sanatorium in 
New Jersey. Bronkhorst, in his work as 
superintendent of the grounds at the sana- 
torium, was occasionally engaged in laying 
water mains in the rocky soil there, and for 
this purpose kept dynamite on hand. Fay 
got a quantity of dynamite from him. Later, 
however, he decided that he wanted a still more 
powerful explosive. 

Again he applied to Kienzle, and this time 
Kienzle got in touch with Siebs direct. By 
prearrangement, Kienzle and Siebs met Fay 
underneath the Manhattan end of the Brook- 
lyn Bridge, and there Siebs was introduced to 
Fay. They walked around City Hall Park 
together discussing the subject; and Fay, not 

7i 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

knowing the name of what he was after, tried 
to make Siebs understand what explosive he 
wanted by describing its properties. Siebs 
finally realized that what Fay had in mind 
was trinitrotoluol, one of the three highest 
explosives known. Siebs finally undertook to 
get some of it for him, but pointed out to 
him the obvious difficulties of buying it in as 
small quantities as he wanted. It was easy 
enough to buy chlorate of potash because that 
was in common commercial use for many 
purposes. It was also easy to buy dynamite 
because that also is used in all quantities 
and for many purposes. But trinitrotoluol 
is too powerful for any but military use, and 
it is consequently handled only in large lots 
and practically invariably is made to the order 
of some government. However, Siebs had an 
idea and proceeded to act on it. 

He went back to the Whitehall Trading 
Company, where he had desk room, and saw 
his fellow occupant, Carl Wettig. Wettig 
had been engaged in a small way in a brokerage 
business in war supplies, and had even taken a 
few small turns in the handling of explosives. 
Siebs had overheard him discussing with a 
customer the market price of trinitrotoluol 
some weeks before, and on this account thought 
possibly Wettig might help him out. When 

72 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

he put the proposition up to Wettig the latter 
agreed to do what he could to fill the order. 

In the meanwhile Fay had sent another 
friend of Brietung's to Bridgeport to see if he 
could get trinitrotoluol in that great city of 
munitions. There he called upon another 
German who was running an employment 
agency — finding jobs for Austro-Hungarians who 
were working in the munitions plants, so that 
he could take them out of the plants and 
divert their labour from the making of war 
supplies for use against the Teutons. The only 
result of this visit was that Brietung's friend 
brought back some loaded rifle cartridges which 
ultimately were used in the bombs as caps to 
fire the charge. But otherwise his trip was of 
no use to Fay. 

Carl Wettig was the weak link in Fay's' 
chain of fortune. He did indeed secure the 
high explosive that Fay wanted, and was in 
other ways obliging. But he got the explosive 
from a source that would have given Fay heart 
failure if he had known of it, and he was oblig- 
ing for reasons that Fay lived to regret. Siebs 
made his inquiry of Wettig on the 19th of 
October. The small quantity of explosives 
that he asked for aroused Wettig' s suspicions 
and as soon as he promised to get it he went 
to the French Chamber of Commerce, near by, 

73 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

told them what he suspected, and asked to be 
put in touch with responsible police author- 
ities under whose direction he wished to act 
in supplying the trinitrotoluol. 

From that moment Fay, Siebs, and Kienzle 
were "waked up in the morning and put to 
bed at night" by detectives from the police de- 
partment of New York City and operatives 
of the Secret Service of the United States. 
By arrangement with them Wettig obtained a 
keg containing 25 pounds of trinitrotoluol, and 
in the absence of Fay and Scholz from their 
boarding house in Weehawken, he delivered 
it personally to their room and left it on their 
dresser. He told Siebs he had delivered it and 
Siebs promptly set about collecting his com- 
mission from Fay. 

Siebs had some difficulty in doing this, be- 
cause Fay and Scholz, being unfamiliar with 
the use of the explosive, were unable to explode 
a sample of it and decided that it was no good. 
They had come home in the evening and found 
the keg on their dresser and had opened it. 
Inside they found the explosive in the form of 
loose white flakes. To keep it more safely, 
they poured it out into several small cloth bags. 
They then took a sample of it and tried by 
every means they could think of to explode it. 
They even laid some of it on an anvil and broke 

74 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

two or three hammers pounding on it, but 
could get no result. They then told Siebs 
that the stuff he had delivered was useless. 
Wettig volunteered to show them how it should 
be handled. Accordingly, he joined them the 
following day at their room in Weehawken 
and went with them out into the woods behind 
Fort Lee, taking along a small sample of the 
powder in a paper bag. In the woods the 
men picked up the top of a small tin can, built 
a fire in the stump of a tree, and melted some 
of the flake "T. N. T." in it. Before it cooled, 
Wettig embedded in it a mercury cap. When 
cooled after being melted, T. N. T. forms a solid 
mass resembling resin in appearance, and is 
now more powerful because more compact. 

However, before the experiment could be 
concluded, one of the swarm of detectives who 
had followed them into the woods stepped on a 
dry twig, and when the men started at its 
crackling, the detectives concluded they had 
better make their arrests before the men might 
get away; and so all were taken into custody. 
A quick search of their boarding house, the 
garage, a storage warehouse in which Fay had 
stored some trunks, and the boathouse where 
the motor boat was stored, resulted in rounding 
up the entire paraphernalia that had been used 
in working out the whole plot. All the people 

75 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

connected with every phase of it were soon 
arrested. 

Out of the stories these men told upon exami- 
nation emerged not only the hideous perfec- 
tion of the bomb itself, but the direct hand 
that the German Government and its agents 
in this country had in the scheme of putting 
it to its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared 
Fay's admission that he had left Germany with 
money and a passport supplied by a man 
in the German Secret Service. Later, on the 
witness stand, when Fay had had time enough 
carefully to think out the most plausible story, 
he attempted to get away from this admission 
by claiming to have deserted from the German 
Army. He said that he had been financed in 
his exit from the German Empire by a group of 
business men who had put up a lot of money to 
back an automobile invention of his, which he 
had worked on before the war began. These 
men, so he claimed, were afraid they would 
lose all their money if he should happen to be 
killed before the invention was perfected. 
This tale, ingenious though it was, was too 
fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connec- 
tion with all the things found in Fay's posses- 
sion when he was arrested. Beyond all doubt 
his scheme to destroy ships was studied and 
approved by his military superiors in Germany 

7 6 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

before he left, and that scheme alone was his 
errand to this country. 

Far less ingenious but equally damning was 
his attempt to explain away his relations 
with Von Papen. The sinister figure of the 
military attache of the German Embassy at 
Washington leers from the background of all 
the German plots; and this case was no excep- 
tion. It was known that Fay had had dealings 
with Von Papen in New York, and on the wit- 
ness stand he felt called upon to explain them 
in a way that would clear the diplomatic ser- 
vice of participation in his evil doings. He 
declared that he had taken his invention to 
Von Papen and that Von Papen had resolutely 
refused to have anything to do with it. This 
would have been well enough if Fay's explana- 
tion had stopped here. 

But Fay's evil genius prompted him to make 
his explanation more convincing by an elabo- 
ration of the story, so he gave Von Papen's 
reasons for refusal. These were not at all 
that the device was calculated to do murder 
upon hundreds of helpless men, nor at all 
that to have any part in the business was to 
play the unneutral villain under the cloak of 
diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the 
first interview, seeing only a rough sketch 
and hearing only Fay's description of prelim- 

77 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

inary experiments, Von Papen's sole objection 
was: 

"Well, you might obtain an explosion once 
and the next ten apparatuses might fail." 

To continue Fay's explanation: 

"He casually asked me what the cost of it 
would be and I told him in my estimation the 
cost would not be more than #20 apiece. [$20 
apiece for the destruction of thirty lives and a 
million-dollar ship and cargo !] As a matter of 
fact, in Germany I will be able to get these 
things made for half that price. 'If it is not 
more than that/ Von Papen said, 'you might 
go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything 
whatever.'" 

Fay then went back to his experiments and 
when he felt that he had practically perfected 
his device he called upon Von Papen for the 
second time. This time Von Papen's reply was : 

"Well, this thing has been placed before our 
experts and also we have gone into the political 
condition of the whole suggestion. Now in the 
first place our experts say this apparatus is not 
at all seaworthy; but as regards political con- 
ditions I am sorry to say we cannot consider it 
and, therefore, we cannot consider the whole 
situation." 

In other words, with no thought of the moral 
turpitude of the scheme, with no thought of 

78 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

the abuse of diplomatic freedom, but only 
with thoughts of the practicability of this de- 
vice and of the effect upon political conditions 
of its use, Von Papen had put the question 
before technical men and before Von Bernstorff, 
and their decision had been adverse solely on 
those considerations — first, that it would not 
work, and second, that it would arouse hostility 
in the United States. At no stage, according 
to Fay's best face upon the matter, was any 
thought given to its character as a hideous crime. 

The device itself was studied independently 
by two sets of military experts of the United 
States Government with these results: 

First, that it was mechanically perfect; 
second, that it was practical under the condi- 
tions of adjustment to a ship's rudder which 
Fay had devised; and third, that the charge of 
trinitrotoluol, for which the container was 
designed, was nearly half the quantity which is 
used on our own floating mines and which is 
calculated upon explosion twenty feet from a 
battleship to put it out of action, and upon 
explosion in direct contact, absolutely to de- 
stroy and sink the heaviest superdreadnaught. 
In other words, beyond all question the bomb 
would have shattered the entire stern of any 
ship to which it was attached, and would have 
caused it to sink in a few minutes. 

79 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

A brief description of the contrivance re- 
veals the mechanical ingenuity and practical 
efficiency of Fay's bomb. A rod attached to the 
rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, turned 
up, by one notch, the first of the bevelled wheels 
within the bomb. After a certain number of 
revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one 
revolution to the next; and so on through the 
series. The last wheel was connected with 
the threaded cap around the upper end of 
the square bolt, and made this cap slowly un- 
screw, until at length the bolt dropped clear 
of it and yielded to the waiting pressure of the 
strong steel spring above. This pressure drove 
it downward and brought the sharp points 
at its lower end down on the caps of the two 
rifle cartridges fixed below it — like the blow 
of a rifle's hammer. The detonation from 
the explosion of these cartridges would set off 
a small charge of impregnated chlorate of potash, 
which in turn would fire the small charge of 
the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, and 
that in turn would explode the still more 
sluggish but tremendously more powerful tri- 
nitrotoluol. 

The whole operation, once the spring was 
free, would take place in a flash; and instantly 
its deadly work would be accomplished. 

Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind 
80 



THE SHIP BOMBS 

as he toiled his six laborious months upon this 
dark invention. He saw himself, in imagina- 
tion, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder 
post of a ship loading at a dock in New York 
harbour. As the cargo weighed the ship down, 
the box would disappear beneath the water. 
At length the ship starts on its voyage, and, as 
the rudder swings her into the stream, the first 
beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship 
and crew is clicked out by its very turning. 
Out upon the sea the shift of wind and blow of 
wave require a constant correction with the 
rudder to hold the true course forward. At 
every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps 
out another of the lurking beats of death. 
Somewhere in midocean, perhaps at black mid- 
night, in a driving storm, the patient mecha- 
nism hid below has turned the last of its calcu- 
lated revolutions. The neckpiece from the bolt 
slips loose, the spring drives downward, there 
is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five min- 
utes later a few mangled bodies and a chaos 
of floating wreckage are all that is left above 
the water's surface. 

This is the hideous dream Fay dreamed in 
the methodical 180 days of his planning and 
experimenting in New York. This is the 
dream to realize which he was able to enlist the 
cooperation of half a dozen other Germans. 

81 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

This is the dream his superiors in Germany 
viewed with favour, and financed. This is the 
dream the sinister Von Papen encouraged and 
which he finally dismissed only because he 
believed it too good to be true. This is the 
dream Fay himself on the witness stand said he 
had thought of as "a good joke on the British." 
In this picture of infernal imaginings the 
true character of German plottings in this 
country stands revealed. Ingenuity of con- 
ception characterized them, method and pa- 
tience and painstaking made them perfect. 
Flawless logic, flawless mechanism. But on 
the human side, only the blackest passions and 
an utter disregard of human life; no thought of 
honour, no trace of human pity. It happened 
in the case of Fay that the agent himself was 
ruthless and deserved far more than what the 
limit of existing law was able to give him when 
he was convicted of his crimes. But through all 
the plots Von Papen, Von Bernstorff, and the 
Imperial German Government in Berlin were 
consistent. Their hand was at the helm of all, 
and the same ruthless grasping after domina- 
tion of the world at any price led to the same 
barbarous code of conduct in them all. 



82 



CHAPTER IV 

The Inside Story of the Captain of the 

"ElTEL FrIEDRICH" 

OUT of the black picture of the German de- 
pravity in fighting this war have emerged 
four or five dramatic episodes that have stirred 
the imagination of the world and appealed to 
the romantic and chivalric instincts even of 
Germany's enemies. The cruise of the Emden 
will always remain one of the glorious traditions 
of the sea. The knightly spirit of those Ger- 
man aviators who flew low over the bier of 
their fallen foe of the French cavalry of the 
clouds, and strewed flowers upon it, was in 
the spirit of the best that war produces. 
America was the scene of two such episodes. 
The first unexpected appearance of the U-53 
upon our shores, rising unheralded from the 
unsuspected waters, thrilled the sporting instinct 
of our people. But perhaps the most dramatic 
incident was the arrival of the Prinz Eitel 
Friedrich. 

83 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

During the night of March 9-10, 191 5, this 
gallant cruiser of the Kaiserliche Marine, 
slipped into the harbour at Norfolk, having 
run the British blockade of cruisers outside 
the three-mile limit, ending a career of six 
months as a commerce raider, recalling the 
feats of the Alabama in the Civil War. The 
Eitel Friedrich was soon interned for the period 
of the war and her officers and crew put under 
formal arrest. Even the British, whose fleet 
had been outwitted, gave their tribute of 
praise to the men who had taken their fair 
chance and had got away.;- Captain Max Thier- 
ichens and his crew became objects of admira- 
tion to the world. They were showered with 
felicitations, most of all, as was natural enough, 
from Germans and German-Americans. 

That is the bright side of the picture — and 
no" one, even now, would care to dim its lus- 
tre. 

But even at his best the German of the ruling 
class seems tainted with the ineradicable nature 
of the beast. The world has long accepted 
the Latin affinity of Mars and Venus — perhaps 
too complacently, though not without reason 
— so it would not have been surprised if the 
gallant Thierichens had not measured up to 
the standards of a Galahad. Nevertheless, 
it had a right to expect that he would not 

84 



THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 

descend to the level of a Caliban; and Thieri- 
chens fell below even that low standard. 

Among the great quantities of letters of con- 
gratulation which Captain Thierichens re- 
ceived were many from German-American 
women. They were stirred by the brilliancy 
of his exploit : it was a ray of light in the gloom 
that had fallen on the Teuton peoples after 
the Battle of the Marne, when the rosy vision 
of quick victory had turned to the gray fog of 
a long, defensive war. These letters breathed 
the passionate loyalty of the German spirit 
to the Fatherland. To these women, Thieri- 
chens was the embodiment of the martial spirit 
of their race — the spirit of the sons they saw 
themselves in imagination sending forth to war. 
Some phrases from their letters strike the key: 

It is a pleasure for us to help our German brothers, but 
I also understand that you, my dear brother, are waiting 
to come out from your predicament. How grand it is 
that you are receiving letters from the Fatherland. We 
don't hear ar diing. Can't write anything, as the letters 
are not being delivered. So far good news. It is wonder- 
ful. My heart is jumping with joy. I look with con- 
fidence in tl : i have to please so many; have so 
many times to defend my Germany, but I have an unlim- 
ited confidence in God and in the truth. 

Again: Hold your head high and do not forget: "star- 
light itself is in the night and God does not forsake his 



8S 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Their attitude was one of high patriotism 
and maternal solicitude. They sent him books 
and delicacies, scraps of news from Germany, 
and in every way sought to comfort and inspirit 
their hero. 

Thierichens was indifferent to the lofty pur- 
pose of these letters. His mind was depraved 
by the social custom of military Germany by 
which men of the officer class are in youth 
taught to consider themselves above the moral 
law. He was quite aware of the kinship of 
all emotions, and he promptly undertook to 
change the direction of these currents of pas- 
sion into a channel more pleasing to his tastes. 
It was not long until he had narrowed his 
correspondence chiefly to three women and 
of these more particularly to two. Of these 
latter one was a German servant girl of rather 
better than average understanding, and the 
other a kindergarten teacher in the Middle 
West, one twenty-five and the other forty-five 
years of age. Their correspondence in both 
cases started on an exalted plane. It ended in 
depravity unprintable. Only < ^~ of the 

complete series of Thierichens's letters to these 
women could give a full understanding of the 
heartlessness, the baseness, and the ingenuity 
with which this man, always playing upon their 
patriotic fervour, transmuted their finer feelings 

86 



THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 

into the most degrading travesty of romantic 
love. He and the kindergarten teacher never 
met. But by the time their correspondence 
came under Government censorship it had 
become a blend of exalted patriotism and of 
passion perverted to the obscenities pictured 
on the walls of ruined Pompeii. 

Terrible as was the plight to which the teacher 
had descended, the case in which the German 
servant found herself was infinitely worse. 
Thierichens and she had met after their first 
interchange of letters and they had entered 
on a liaison of a character that became so base 
it cannot even be suggested. 

All this while Thierichens was in corres- 
pondence with at least eight other misguided 
women. Fortunately for them the strong hand 
of the law intervened and Thierichens to-day 
is safely behind prison bars for his crimes. 
In the midst of this promiscuous correspondence 
he was receiving letters of affection and devotion 
from his wife and children, two of which may well 
be reproduced to make clearer the depth to which 
he fell. One is from his little daughter Christel, 
the other from his wife. They are as follows: 

Kiel, November 26, 1916. 
My Dear Father: 

My darling, to-day the day of my 6th birthday, I 
will thank you all alone for the pretty things, lovely 

87 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

kisses for same. I hope my next birthday you will be 
with us again. I am praying every evening and morning 
to the dear God that he will protect my dear father, 
and that the war will soon be ended, and you come 
again to the dear Fatherland. 
Many hundred thousand kisses sent you, 

Your thankful daughter, 

Christel. 

Kiel, Germany, 23rd March, 191 7. 
My Only Muckicken : 

I want to chat with you again a little to-day; had 
very little time yesterday; did some shopping morning, 
and some stocking mending in the afternoon; some 
linen work in the evening; went early to bed; had love 
pains; had a little cold. This morning I went with 
Christel to Karestadt, bought some stockings, a school 
hat and gloves for her; also a leather hat for Elly; very 
neat. I am dressing Elly still like a child; she also is 
still wearing her hair down her back; she is any way a 
child yet. To-morrow I will get some bones from the 
war kitchen for Fritz, and then I shall ride together with 
the children to Aunt Niemann. To-day is a sunny 
day, but still a little cold. And now I shall answer 
No. 50. From Christmas Eve, 24-12-16. No, darling, 
we want to hope that we shall enjoy the 6th Christmas 
evening together; a description of our Christmas evening 
you probably received. You darling, you're writing so 
as if we were hungry, no, my darling, we have not had 
any hunger here in Germany yet. We are having our 
butter, eggs, meat, bread, and potatoes every day; only 
not so much of it as in times of peace. Well, of course, 
then everything was extravagantly used. So now every- 
body has to learn to be economical which is a good lesson 

88 




CAPTAIN THIERICHENS (top) 
And scenes on the Eitel Friedrich, which escaped from Tsing-tau and interned 

at Norfolk 



THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 

for days to come, so please don't listen to the talk of our 
enemies, — we are all right; nobody will conquer us; God, 
the Lord, won't leave us alone, — we are all brave. What 
did Russia gain by the revolution? Something of that 
kind is impossible in Germany. The responsibility for 
same rests with England again. We shall wait to see 
how everything turns out. England will be punished 
surely. Now, my darling, enough for to-day. Please re- 
main healthy, and retain your humor. Be thankful and 
bravely greeted from your three sprouts and Thiere. 

To make complete the picture of this hero 
of the Prussian officer class, it may be well 
to quote also the round robin of the crew 
of the Prinz Eitel Friedrich. To them even the 
air of an American internment camp was 
the breath of freedom compared to their service 
on a ship of his Imperial Majesty's Marine. 
Here is their opinion of life in it and of their 
gallant captain : 

Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., 
July 8. 
United States District Attorney, 

Philadelphia, Pa. 
Dear Sir: 

We of the crew of the Prince Eitel Friedrich, beg to 
inform you about the conditions as there had been existing 
on board said vessel, and of the character of Captain 
Max Thierichens. He is one of the most cruel and dis- 
honest men who ever had been in charge of a vessel. He 
is a disgrace to any military organization, and we feel 
ashamed that he brought disgrace to our vessel. He is 

8 9 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

one of the worst egoists in existence, without any feeling 
for his fellowmen. He is guilty of using the United 
States mails for fraudulent purposes, advertising in the 
papers that he would receive liebesgaben (love packages) 
for the soldiers in order to benefit himself, and later 
selling the same in the cantine after an inspection and 
rilling; he kept everything of value. He has received 
1,000 of packages and money from very near every Ger- 
man society and countless private people, but his men 
never saw a penny of the same. The money he has spent 
for himself and some of his officers in his orgies. 

As we had been out on the high seas, he only had an 
eye for his personal welfare. If we met a vessel, after 
stopping the same, the first thing he always did was to 
secure as much wine and other good things for himself, 
and officers, so that they always had plenty. He would 
not allow his sailors to bring enough potatoes and common 
food on board to satisfy their hunger. There had been 
cases where men had been severe punished just for taking 
a piece of meat from the table of one of the sunken vessels. 
The men did not even have drinking water but he and 
his officers used the same for bathing. He had been 
afraid that the U. S. Government would find out about 
his various misdeeds, so in order to make the Govern- 
ment think that he was all he should have represented he 
pulled off the biggest blufF ever thought of. He told ten 
men that they could run off, supplied the same with 
money, and after a few moments sent some other boys 
over the side to make as much noise as possible to call 
the attention of the guards. He had his men maltreated 
wherever there was a chance to do so. He even did this 
after we had been brought to Fort Oglethorpe. We have 
to thank the U. S. Officers for putting a stop to it. The 
captain had been mad that he lost the power over the 

90 



THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 

men. He swore he would bring the men to a military 
prison for years to come, simply because they refused 
to be treated like dogs after being informed by the U. S. 
Officers that they don't have to stand for anything like 
that. If it was not for the iron discipline maintained 
by the Germans, there would have been a mutiny on 
board the ship. Even a common man hates to see good 
supplies going to waste just because the captain could 
not get quick enough to his wine, and the men feed on 
hardtack that was full of worms. Some of the men are 
willing to appear in court against the captain to bear out 
because they are not protected by the U. S. Government, 
and may have to face a court martial law if they are 
returned to Germany. We do hope that there will be 
an investigation of the evil doings of said Captain. If 
found guilty, we do hope that he may find out what it 
does mean to do wrong to his fellowmen. 



91 



CHAPTER V 

James J. F. Archibald and His Pro-German 
Activities 

THE case of James J. F. Archibald, war 
correspondent, is another sample of the 
Germans' fatal gift for trusting a weak link 
in an otherwise ingenious and complete chain. 
Their "cleverness" was the cleverness of the 
cocky boy who thinks he can outwit any one. 
The sad ending of Archibald's career, the igno- 
minious exposure of his character as a messenger 
for the Germans, was simplicity itself. And the 
revelations contained in the messages he carried 
were most discreditable to the honour and the 
wisdom of the plotters in the Teutonic embassies. 
The story begins on July 29, 19 14, six days 
after Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and three 
days before the formal historical date of the 
opening of the war. On that day an enter- 
prising American newspaper syndicate tele- 
graphed Mr. Archibald as follows: 

Please telegraph us your terms for going to the European 
war, so that we can size up the syndicate field. As soon 
as received will try for quick action. 

The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc. 

92 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

Archibald soon had his arrangements made, 
though his employers were ignorant of the 
reason for the surprising ease with which he 
obtained the highest possible entree to the 
best possible points of observation within the 
German lines. It should be said at once that 
their attitude was perfectly correct and that 
the moment they discovered the true nature 
of his errand they discharged him by cable, 
on October 27th. But that comes later in 
the story. 

Archibald was a man of true grandiose 
German style. Writing to the syndicate on 
September 4th he said: 

You should not confound my efforts with more than 
five hundred correspondents of every description who have 
attempted to get to the English, French, and Belgian 
fronts, none of them with any official recognition and most 
of them without even a passport. At the hysterical 
beginning of the war, correspondents are very much in 
the way but every cartoonist, humorist, and amateur 
millionaire who wanted a little private excitement rushed 
to the front and embarrassed the armies in their mobil- 
ization and naturally they were not gladly received. 
I have been working quietly, just as I did in the Russian 
War when I was the first, and only, foreign correspondent 
to be accepted after four months' waiting. 

There is no necessity of coming into conflict with any 
censors if one knows military censorship as I do, for all 
they require is that you will not embarrass their present 
actual movements. There is not one single foreign cor- 

93 



WASHINGTON p. C 



J.Nfi A 2875. 



Dear Sir, 

I oeg to enclose a .notice" to prospective 
American travellers and to ask whether you could have 
it printed as advertisement in the newspapers mention 
ed on the enclosed list once a week during the next 
three or four" weeks. I presume that the prices given 
are correct and "that. it will be possible to reduce 
the rates somewhat for a repetition of th8 advertise- 
ment. 

Thanking you lrf advance for a kind answer at 
your earliest convenience, I am 

Yours very truly, 
For .the German Ambassador 




Councillor of the Embassy. 



Ir. Albert J. Sehaffer, 
Washington,.D.C. 



THE " LUSITANIA " WARNING 
This letter, signed by Haniel, the Councillor of the German Embassy 
in Washington, clears up the mystery of the advertisement printed 
in leading newspapers in all parts of the country on May I, 1915, 

94 



.NOTICE! 

TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage 
are reminded that a State of War exists between Germany and 
her Allies and Great Britain and her Allies; that the zone 
of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; 
that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperia 
German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain 
or of any of her Allies, are liable to destruction in those 
waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships 
of Great Britain or her Allies do so at their own risk. 

IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY 
Washington, D.C., April 22,1915. 



I LINE 

■Screir Steaiflsbjps 

to GLASGOW 

May 1, Noon 

rom Piar 64, N. R. 

%,Mav7fSp.m. 

Liverpool. 



I All-the-Way 
i. by- Water 

•• LINE. Steamships 
Etar. Lve. Pier 18, 

it., 6 P. M.' Tups., 

}l*htfu! a90-mile, 22- 
the CtTT BEAUTI- 

,80 Tourist and N. Y. 

Phone; 8980 — Cort. 

IP COBPOBATION. 



. LINE 

thern Boots 

*our» from Pari*. 

ES * MARSEILLES 
Sant' Anna.. June 6 
LUbon.4! Marseilles 
Roma.'. ...i Am 
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TLOBIDA 



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___ ADYBBTIBtoaENT. 



NOTICE! 

TRAVELLERS intending to 
embark on the Atlantic voyage 
are reminded that a state of 
war exists between Germany 
and her allies and Great Britain 
and her allies; that the zone of 
war includes the waters" adja- 
cent to the British Isles; that, 
in accordance with formal no- 
tice given by the Imperial Ger- 
man Government, vessels fly- 
ing the flag of Great Britain, or 
of any of her allies, are liable to 
destruction in those waters and 
that travellers sailing in the war 
zone on ships of Great Britain 
or her allies da so at their own 
risk. 

IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY 

WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 22, 1815. 



BANSBtPTOT NOTICEB. 



'■"or'a.T .w»«* 



.-a. Open inae lift; > s«» 
8. B. MANWABINO.- 



'STEW KNGIAND-SlaMa, 

heatopTh^ 

Stockbridge, Massa* 

in th« Berkshire R 

WILL OPEN JUTO 

Tbla Modern Hotel Is FInoly. A 
Delightfully Located. The Man, 
Havlll, -will fed at the Botel HHi 
47th St., New York, from April. 
10th. Information regarding rati 
he promptly attended to. 



/ Marblehead, Ma 

THE.ROCK-W 

Hotel de Luxe Opens' 

\ Faces all the YacI 
BOOKLETS G. H. BRA 



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STOCKBRIDGE, F 

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OPEN AIL 



five days before the Lusitania was sunk. The date on Haniel's letter 
and the repetition of it on the copy of the advertisement as supplied by 
him, clears up the hitherto unexplained discrepancy between the date on 
the advertisement and the date of its publication ta ' 

95 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

respondent with either the German or Austrian armies, 
and it will be a great achievement to get dispatches out 
from there and I am positive, with the papers that I now 
hold, that there will be no difficulty whatever. The 
difficulty is merely in establishing one's responsibility 
with these armies, and my residence in Washington for 
the last ten years has been for that purpose alone. 

Archibald was soon in Germany and began 
sending back cable dispatches to a syndicate of 
papers, the principal ones of which were the 
New York Times, Tribune, and World. His 
dispatches, however, were so blatantly pro- 
German and had so much more propaganda 
than news in them that these papers quickly 
became dissatisfied. For example, the Times 
cut out of one of his dispatches a large section 
of fulsome eulogy of the German Government. 
Imagine their astonishment the next morning 
to receive a telephone call from Captain 
Boy-Ed, the Naval Attache of the German 
Embassy with offices in New York. Captain 
Boy-Ed demanded the reason for the omis- 
sion of these paragraphs. The Times natur- 
ally demanded Captain Boy-Ed's source of 
information that such paragraphs existed. 
It soon developed that Boy-Ed was receiving 
direct from Germany duplicates of all the 
material that Archibald was cabling for pub- 
lication. As soon as the American news- 

9 6 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

papers understood this situation they declined 
to proceed further. In the same spirit and 
simultaneously the Wheeler Syndicate " fired" 
Mr. Archibald by cable and wrote him a sting- 
ing letter from which the following two para- 
graphs may be quoted: 

Perhaps because of the nature of your stuff, at any 
rate, we have to face the veiled insinuation that you are 
in the pay of the German and Austrian Governments. 
In this connection, we have been told that the German 
and Austrian Ambassadors to this country have received 
in skeleton form the several wireless dispatches you sent 
to us addressed care the Times. We think you should 
know this, and also know that, with the nature of your 
dispatches such as they were, we dared not allow our- 
selves, by continuing the service, to be laid open to the 
charge that we were in the employ of the German and 
Austrian Governments. So we had to terminate the 
service. 

We have instructed the Times not to accept any more 
wireless dispatches from you, and the wireless company 
has been notified that no dispatches will be accepted. 
We regret exceedingly the situation, but it is one that has 
arisen solely from the fact that you have sent over your 
personal pro-German opinions instead of the battlefront 
news you assured us that you would furnish us. 

Nothing daunted by these rebuffs, Archi- 
bald continued his exploits as "war corres- 
pondent, " interspersing his labours at the front 
with voyages back to the United States, osten- 
sibly to deliver lectures. The true character 

97 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

of his movements stands revealed in a letter 
Archibald received from Bernstorff, the Ger- 
man Ambassador, a few days before he em- 
barked on the voyage from New York which 
was to be his last. This letter was written 
from Bernstorff's summer home at Cedarhurst, 
Long Island, on the 19th of August, 191 5, 
and reads as follows: 

Dear Mr. Archibald: 

I send you herewith the two letters of recommenda- 
tion asked for and hope that they will be useful to you. 
I learn with pleasure that you wish once again to return 
to Germany and Austria as you have interceded for our 
concerns here so courageously and successfully. 
With best compliments, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Bernstorff. 

One of these letters was as follows: 

The German Frontier Custom Authorities are re- 
quested to kindly give to the bearer of this letter, Mr 
James J. F. Archibald, from New York, who is going to 
Germany with photographic apparatus, etc., in order to 
collect material for lectures in the United States in the 
interests of Germany, all possible facilities compatible 
with regulations in the dispatching of his luggage. 

Imperial Ambassador 
Bernstorff. 

The familiar story of what happened next 
is that Archibald carried some secret docu- 
ments for Bernstorff and Dumba in a hollow 

98 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

cane. This could scarcely be, for the docu- 
ments he carried were so numerous and some 
of them so bulky that the cane would need to 
have been a giant's walking stick. In any 
event, the documents themselves are of more 
interest than their vehicle. They were taken 
from Archibald by the British authorities at 
Falmouth. The series can be best introduced 
by a letter from Ambassador Dumba to his 
chief, Baron Burian, Minister for Foreign 
Affairs in Vienna, which reads: 

My Lord: 

Yesterday evening Consul General von Nuber received 
the inclosed aide memoir e from the chief editor of the 
locally known paper s Szabodsog, after a previous con- 
ference with him and in pursuance of his proposals to 
arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem Schwab steel and 
munitions war factory, and also in the Middle West. 

Dr. Archibald, who is well known to your lordship, 
leaves to-day at 12 o'clock on board the Rotterdam, for 
Berlin and Vienna. I take this rare and safe opportunity 
to warmly recommend the proposal to your lordship's 
favourable consideration. 

It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold 
up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture 
of munitions in Bethlehem and the Middle West, which, 
in the opinion of the German military attache, is of great 
importance and amply outweighs the expenditure of 
money involved. 

But even if strikes do not come off, it is probable that 
we should extort, under the pressure of the crisis, more 

99 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

favourable conditions of labour for our poor, down-trodden 
fellow countrymen. In Bethlehem these white slaves are 
now working for twelve hours a day and seven days a week. 
All weak persons succumb and become consumptives. 

So far as German workmen are found among the 
skilled hands, a means of leaving will be provided for 
them. 

Besides this a private German registry office has 
been established, which provided employment for persons 
who have voluntarily given up their places, and is already 
working well. They will also join, and the widest support 
is assured me. 

I beg your excellency to be so good as to inform me 
with reference to this letter by wireless telegraphy., reply- 
ing whether y6u agree. 

Dumba. 

The consideration which "Doctor" Archi- 
bald received for his complacency in giving 
his friends Dumba and Bernstorff "this rare 
and safe opportunity" is indicated by his 
receipt of April 24, 1915, to the German 
Embassy in Washington for #5,000 for propa- 
ganda work. 

Further light upon "the enclosed aide 
memoire. ... in pursuance of his pro- 
posals to arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem 
Schwab steel and munitions war factory," is 
gained by the following quotations from the 
enclosure mentioned by Dumba in his letter 
to Burian. The enclosure was an outline of 
a scheme for fomenting strikes, submitted to 

100 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

Dumba by William Warm, the Editor of 

Szabodsog [in English, Freedom.] 

In my opinion we must start a very strong agitation 
on this question in the Freedom (Szabodsog) a leading 
organ, with respect to the Bethlehem works and the 
conditions there. This can be done in two ways, and 
both must be utilized. In the first place, a regular daily 
section must be devoted to the conditions obtaining there 
and a campaign must be regularly conducted against 
those indescribably degrading conditions. The Freedom 
has already done something similar in the recent past, 
when the strike movement began at Bridgeport. It 
must naturally take the form of strong, deliberate, decided, 
and courageous action. Secondly, the writer of these 
lines would begin a labour novel in that newspaper much 
on the lines of Upton Sinclair's celebrated story, and this 
might be published in other local Hungarian, Slovak, 
and German newspapers also. Here we arrive at the 
point that naturally we shall also require other news- 
papers. The American Magyar Nepszava (Word of the 
People) will undoubtedly be compelled willingly or un- 
willingly to follow the movement initiated by the Free- 
dom (Szabodsog), for it will be pleasing to the entire 
Hungarian element in America, and an absolute patriotic 
act to which that open journal (the Nepszava) could 
not adopt a hostile attitude. . . . 

In the interest of successful action at Bethlehem and 
the Middle West, besides the Szabodsog, the Nepszava, 
the new daily paper of Pittsburg must be set in motion, 
and those of Bridgeport Youngtown District, etc., also 
two Slovak papers. Under these circumstances, the 
first necessity is money. To Bethlehem must be sent 
as many reliable Hungarian and German workmen as 

IOI 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

I can lay my hands on who will join the factories and 
begin their work in secret among their fellow workmen. 
For this purpose, I have my men Turners in Steelwork. 
We must send an organizer, who in the interests of the 
Union will begin the business in his own way. We 
must , also send so-called "soap-box" orators who 
will know, and so to start a useful agitation. We shall 
want money for popular meetings and possibly for or- 
ganizing picnics. In general, the same applies to the 
Middle West. I am thinking of Pittsburg and Cleveland 
in the first instance, as to which I could give details only 
if I were to return and spend at least a few days there. 

It is my opinion that for the special object of starting 
the Bethlehem business and for the Bethlehem and 
Western newspaper campaign, $15,000 to $20,000 must 
be able to be disposed of, but it is not possible to reckon 
how much will ultimately be required; when a beginning 
has been made it will be possible to see how things de- 
velop, and where and how much it is worth while to 
spend. The above-mentioned preliminary sum would 
suffice to partially satisfy the demands of the necessary 
newspapers and to a considerable extent those of the 
Bethlehem campaign. 

These documents should be read in the 
light of their date, August 20, 1915, and of the 
fact that the United States was a neutral 
nation, still harbouring the representatives of 
the "friendly" German and Austro-Hungarian 
empires. They are conclusive enough, in 
themselves, of the pernicious activities of 
these Embassies, but they wall become doubly 
significant in a later article in this series when 

* 102 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

they are read in the light of the activities of 
"Labour's National Peace Council/' 

Another document which Dumba entrusted 
to Archibald was his report to Burian on the 
then recent publication in the New York World 
of the papers taken from a satchel left in an 
elevated train by Dr. Heinrich Albert, the 
financial adviser of the German Embassy in 
America and the paymaster for a great deal 
of its work in plots and propaganda. This 
dispatch of Dumba's is worthy of reproduction 
in full. It is : 

A map and a number of documents — typed but un- 
finished copies or statements of petitioners — were stolen 
from the financial adviser of the German Embassy here, 
obviously by the English Secret Service. These docu- 
ments are now published in the current issue of the 
World, which has gone over to the English "Yingolager" 
(Jingo camp) as a great sensation, with cheap advertise- 
ment. The paper makes the most violent accusations 
against the German Embassy, mainly against Count Von 
BernstorfF, Military Attache Captain Von Papen, and 
Geheimrat Albert, who are said to have conspired secretly 
against the safety of the United States, in that they have 
bought arms and munition factories, have concluded 
bogus contracts for delivery with France and Russia, 
have purchased large quantities of explosive materials, 
have incited strikes in the munition factories, have sought 
to corrupt the press, and have spread far-reaching agitation 
for the effecting of an embargo in the different American 
circles. The other important New York papers second 

103 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

the World although with less violence, for, in their leading 
articles, by misrepresentation of the facts, they accuse 
Germany of all possible and impossible machinations — 
for instance, they, like the World, bring forward the asser- 
tion that the German Government wished to stop the 
supply of ammunition to the Allies, while itself secretly 
sending quantities over. 

Count Von Rernstorfftook the view that these calumnies 
were beneath reply, and by a happy inspiration, refused 
any explanation. He is in no way compromised. On 
the contrary, it appears from the published correspondence 
of various press agents that he vetoed the purchase of 
a press agency. 

On the other hand, Geheimrat Albert published in 
the newspapers a very cleverly worded explanation, 
the tenor of which I venture to submit to Your Excellency 
in an enclosure. It is especially to the credit of the 
German Embassy that on July 15th last it informed the 
State Department officially that it found itself compelled 
to buy as many materials of war in this country as it 
possibly could, and to control their production, with the 
intention of preventing their being supplied to the 
enemy. These materials, it stated, were at any time at 
the disposal of the American Government at favourable 
prices, either as a whole or in parts, and of course this 
could only further the readiness of the United States for 
taking the field in war. 

Here the absurd accusations of the conspiracy collapse. 
Also, with regard to the accusations as to the incitement 
of strikes, there is no proof of the empty statements made. 
Nevertheless, everything German here is slandered and 
run down with emphasis and consistency. An impartial 
individual can hardly escape the feeling of appreciation 
with which the far-reaching activity of Geheimrat Albert 

104 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

must inspire him. But there are very few impartial 
persons in New York. 

The torpedoing of the Arabic , in the event of its having 
been done without warning, or its having caused American 
passengers to lose their lives, will do more than any 
newspaper accusations to prejudice Germany in the public 
opinion of the United States. 

The Imperial and Royal Ambassador, 

' (Signed) C. Dumba. 

Archibald carried numerous other papers — 
for the Germans as well as for the Austrians. 
The most interesting of these was a report 
from Franz von Papen, military attache of the 
German Embassy upon the same World ex- 
posure. The following are extracts from this 
dispatch: 

Military Report 
The "Sensational Revelations" of the New York World 

On July 31 important papers were abstracted from 
Herr Geheimrat Dr. Albert in the elevated railway, 
apparently by an individual in the employ of the English 
Secret Service. These papers were sold to the World and 
formed the basis of the revelations (Enclosure 1) which 
gave to the New York press, friendly to the Allies, a wel- 
come opportunity to make a fresh outburst against the 
Imperial Government and the Imperial representatives 
in this country. . . . 

Apart from political results the consequences of the 
publications for us show themselves in connection with 
business. 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Bridgeport Projectile Co. 

The report of June 30 of the Treasurer of this Company 
which I forwarded to the Royal Ministry of War on July 
13, J. No. 1888, was among the stolen papers. 

The declaration, published in the papers, of the Presi- 
dent of the Aetna Explosive Co. that he intended to 
throw up powder contracts with the Bridgeport Pro- 
jectile Co. is of course only newspaper gossip and was 
already much weakened yesterday through a fresh expla- 
nation by the firm (Enclosure V). 

In connection also with the delivery of presses, I 
do not believe that the manufacturers will place difficulties 
in our way because the careful drawing up of the contract 
excludes all attack on the Projectile Co. under the well- 
known Sherman Law, and the claim that the manufacturers 
had supposed the deliveries to be intended for the Allies — 
in other words, that the contracts had been obtained by 
us under false representations — offers a legal basis too 
weak to enable the persons who undertake delivery to 
risk the expense and results of a lawsuit. 

The only actual damage consists in that the Russian 
and English committee have at once broken off their 
negotiations with the Bridgeport Projectile Co. and that 
thus our plans to cut off, by the acceptance and non- 
delivery of a shrapnel contract, other firms here from the 
possibility of beginning the furnishing of war material 
have come to nothing. 

The purchase of phenol by Dr. Schweitzer of the 
Edison Co., which has at the same time been disclosed, 
is disposed of by the explanation published to the effect 
that this phenol is only to be worked up into medicine. 

Most of all have our efforts for the purchase of liquid 
chlorine been interfered with, since the tying up through 
middlemen of the Castner Chemical Company, which 

106 



THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 

is friendly to England, appears now to be out of the 
question. 

I shall use the means placed at my disposal (informa- 
tion of Herr Grothen) for the purpose of arriving at an 
agreement with the Electro Bleaching Company. The 
published negotiations for the acquisition of the Wright's 
patent is without importance, since on our behalf a judical 
decision against the Curtiss Company so far as one can 
see, would not have been obtained. 

Part of the significance of Von Papen's 
dispatch is his reference to the Bridgeport 
Projectile Company. Other documents in the 
possession of the United States Government 
demonstrate completely the ownership of this 
corporation by the Teutonic Allies. Hans 
Tauscher, the agent of Krupps and other 
German munition factories in this country, 
was in the habit of reporting direct to the 
War Ministry in Berlin as if he were its repre- 
sentative in this country — as indeed he was 
though not ostensibly so. Among other papers 
in the hands of the Government is a letter 
from the President of the Bridgeport Projectile 
Company, informing him that the company 
is being reorganized and that hereafter Mr. 
Tauscher will hold as trustee only 60 per cent. 
of the capital stock. Naturally Tauscher was 
not acting as trustee for anybody but his em- 
ployers. 

Another document, of little importance, is 
107 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

a letter Von Papen wrote to his wife and sent 
by Archibald. But two parts of it are inter- 
esting. After speaking again of the World ex- 
posure he, says : 

The answer of Albert I am sending you herewith so 
you can see how we defend ourselves. The document we 
drew up together yesterday. 

But the bright spot for the Americans whose 
hospitality he was abusing lies in this: 

How splendid in the East! I always say to these 
idiotic Yankees that they should shut their mouths and 
better still be full of admiration for all that heroism. 
My friends from the Army are in this respect quite 
different. 

Papen's "friends from the Army" have, with 
a good many of "these idiotic Yankees/' or- 
ganized an army and are looking for Captain 
Franz again, this time over the top in France, 
with the determination to settle the question 
with his government on the battlefield. 



108 



CHAPTER VI 

A Tale Told in Telegrams 

ONE day in October, 1915, a good-looking 
young fellow wandered into the office of 
the United States Attorney at Detroit and 
inquired if the office was making any investi- 
gations into dynamite cases. His inquiry was 
odd enough of itself, but coupled with his 
personal appearance and his entirely unexpected 
arrival on the scene, it was doubly mysterious. 
Lewis J. Smith, as his name turned out to be, 
looked like a handsome, big, farmer's boy who 
had come to town and made a little money. 
He was well dressed in what he considered 
the style, and in conversation developed a 
winning smile and a very engaging and con- 
vincing personality. There was the fresh whole- 
someness of country breeding about him that 
comported strangely with his guarded and 
mysterious talk of dynamite. The United 
States Attorney thought he must be a "little 
off/' but referred him to the local agent of 
the Department of Justice. 
To this agent Smith told at first an incoher- 
109 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

ent story. But the agent was tactful and sym- 
pathetic and by asking a question now and 
then and even more by refraining from asking 
questions at embarrassing moments, he drew 
out from Smith most of the details of one of 
the most dangerous German plots, incidentally 
exposing the organization of theGerman spysys- 
tem west of the Mississippi River. 

The story revealed by Smith and by the 
corroborative testimony in the subsequent in- 
vestigation was this: Consul-General Bopp 
discovered that the California Powder Mills 
at Pinole, across the bay from San Francisco, 
was manufacturing powder for the use of 
the Russians on the Eastern Front in Europe, 
and that this powder was being shipped from 
Tacoma and Seattle to Vladivostok. One 
particularly large shipment was under way 
and he wanted to stop it. He employed 
C. C. Crowley, who had been for many years 
head detective for the Southern Pacific Rail- 
road but lately discharged for grafting, to 
undertake this job along with several others. 
Crowley lived in the Hotel Gartland in San 
Francisco, and bought his cigars at a little 
German stand across the street. Through this 
German, who was also patronized by Smith, 
Crowley learned that Smith had been employed 
recently in the California Powder Mills but 

no 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

was out of a job. Crowley introduced him- 
self to Smith and first gave him the task of 
going back to the mill and finding out exactly 
how the powder for Russia was being routed. 
He gave Smith several hundred dollars, and 
the next day Smith's former fellow employees 
were astonished to see him ride up to the works 
in an automobile, completely outfitted in new 
clothes and flourishing a roll of bills big enough 
to make them gasp. Smith soon found how 
the powder was packed and marked and also 
that it was being loaded on a big scow and would 
be towed by sea to Tacoma for loading there 
on ships for Vladivostok. 

A few days later Crowley told Smith to go 
to Tacoma and register at the Donnelly Hotel, 
and that he would join him there, going by 
another train. There they would manufacture 
bombs of a type which Smith had devised, 
and Smith was to place these bombs on the 
ships that would carry the powder to Russia. 

Smith took his wife to Tacoma. They 
registered at the Donnelly Hotel, but as they 
soon discovered they would have to spend 
some time in the city, they took an apartment. 
Smith and Crowley were constantly meeting 
and between them surveyed all the shipping 
in the harbour and found out when the boats 
would sail and what they were carrying. The 

in 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

barge load of powder from California was 
towed into the harbour while they were there, 
and anchored in midstream to await the light- 
ering of its cargo to the trans-Pacific ships. 
These ships proved to be the Kifuku Maru and 
the Shinsei Maru (Japanese), the Hazel Dollar, 
an American boat flying the British flag, and 
the TalthybiuSy a British ship. Smith under- 
took to place bombs on all of them. 

What Smith actually did was to visit small 
stores in Tacoma and near Seattle and buy 
regular commercial 40 per cent, dynamite in 
sticks, telling the storekeepers that he was 
clearing a farm and wanted the dynamite for 
use in blowing up stumps. He loaded a lot of 
it into an old suitcase and left Crowley one 
afternoon, telling him he was going to place 
this on one of the ships that night. Instead, 
he went out into the woods with it, cached it 
under a log, the position of which he fixed in 
memory by a big stump and a tree that had a 
big rock in its fork, then walked on down to the 
railroad track, carrying his suitcase, and later 
threw the suitcase away down an embankment. 
He reported to Crowley that he had not been 
able to get anything on the Kifuku Maru, 
which was the first to sail, but that he had 
" fixed" the Hazel Dollar, the Shinsei Maru, 
and the Talthybius. 

112 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

Crowley, in the meantime, had been keeping 
in touch with the Germans in San Francisco. 
It had been arranged that all dealings with 
them were to be through Von Brincken. 
Crowley, on his part, kept in touch with his 
secretary, Mrs. Cornell, she communicating 
in person, or by telephone, with Von Brincken, 
and Von Brincken reporting to Bopp and get- 
ting further orders. 

A great deal of the story from this point on 
is A Tale Told in Telegrams.' The first of 
these telegrams, which figured in the subsequent 
trial, was dated Tacoma, May 13, 1915. It 
was addressed to Crowley who had not yet 
joined Smith. The message was: 

Fine weather Kaifuku Box 244 five days. 

S. Hotel Donnelly. 

This message was, of course, from Smith and 
was in the crude code that had been agreed 
upon. "Fine weather " meant that every- 
thing was O. K. "Kaifuku" gave the name 
of the ship on which the powder would probably 
be carried. "Box 244" was the post-office 
address through which Smith could be reached, 
and "five days" was the probable sailing date 
of the Kifuku. 

It so happened, however, that a few hours 
after Smith had sent this telegram Crowley 

113 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

arrived in Tacoma. Crowley was always full 
of fear that he would be detected, and he 
was afraid of the message that Smith had sent. 
He, therefore, immediately telegraphed to Mrs. 
Cornell to go to the Gartland Hotel in San Fran- 
cisco and get this telegram, and telegraphed also 
to the hotel to give it to her when she called. 

Between one and two o'clock in the morn- 
ing of Sunday, May 30th (Decoration Day), 
everybody in Tacoma and Seattle was jarred 
from his slumbers by a terrific explosion in 
the harbour. The scow load of powder had 
disappeared in one grand flash, crash, and cloud 
of smoke, carrying with it the night watch- 
man who had been living on it. One hundred 
thousand dollars' worth of plate glass in Tacoma 
and Seattle was destroyed and news of the 
explosion was telegraphed to the papers all 
over the country. Crowley had got the main, 
part of his job done in one quick stroke. 

Here was good news for the Germans. 
Crowley could not wait for the mails to carry 
it, so the next day he sent the following tele- 
gram to Mrs. Cornell: 

Work has been good. And all fixed. No connection 
v/ith the big Circus it was an accident to the Elephant. 

This cryptic message meant: 
"Work has been good and all fixed," that he 
114 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

and Smith had had good luck in their plots 
against the ships and that bombs had been 
placed on all of them. "No connection with 
the big Circus it was an accident to the Ele- 
phant," the "big Circus" was the four ships 
for Vladivostok and the "Elephant" was the 
scow — in other words, the explosion had not 
interfered with their work against the ships. 

Before Crowley got his message off, however, 
Mrs. Crowley had sent one to him. The Ger- 
mans were in a panic. Von Brincken had tele- 
phoned her that Bopp had word that Smith 
had been arrested and had given the game away, 
so she telegraphed : 

Von learned your friend told all before leaving. 
Anxious. Answer. 

M. W. C. 

To this Crowley replied: 

Show that telegram to him also say I do not credit 
report on S. he made good. 

c. 

"That telegram" meant his message about 
the circus. To this Mrs. Cornell replied: 

Don't understand your message. Get letter Portland 
Post-office on arrival. 

M. W. C. 

Crowley ? she knew, was leaving immediately 
for San Francisco. 

ii5 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

There were some grounds for the Germans 
apprehension. Smith was arrested and charged 
with having caused the explosion on the scow. 
But after a little manoeuvring he managed to 
get free of the charge and, with money wired 
to him at Tacoma by Crowley, went back to 
San Francisco where Crowley paid him first 
#300 and then $600 in currency. 

The Germans, however, had been pretty 
well frightened and they thought it was about 
time to get both Smith and Crowley away. 
Smith and his wife were hustled off to Sacra- 
mento where they lived at a hotel for a little 
while and then Mrs. Smith was sent on ahead 
to New York, while Crowley and Smith arranged 
to meet in Chicago to carry out a new plan 
that the Germans had devised. 

This plot was to use Detroit as headquarters 
for operations in Canada and there to blow 
up the stockyards at St. Thomas, Ontario, and 
trains carrying horses for shipment to Europe. 
Crowley and Smith got together in Chicago 
and visited the stockyards to spot the ship- 
ments of horses toward the Atlantic seaboard. 
They learned that a good many of these ship- 
ments were being routed through Canada by 
way of Detroit. In the meantime, however, 
the Germans in San Francisco were getting rest- 
less. They had expected almost every day 

116 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

that the ships for Vladivostok would be re- 
ported blown up or missing. They had heard 
neither, and they were beginning to suspect 
that they had been deceived. They had been 
deceived, but so had Crowley — and this ex- 
plains the tenor of his replies in the Second 
Tale Told in Telegrams. The first intimation 
of trouble he received was a telegram from 
Mrs. Cornell on June 21st, to which she signed 
her middle initial: 

Saw him noon gave message. He was astonished. 

Said we'll ± suspend judgment for a few days. Queer 

news this morning. He suspects you were interested 
in the failure. 

W. 

1 

Meantime, Crowley had gone on to Detroit 
and this message was wired to him at the 
Hotel Statler there. His reply is missing, but 
he evidently expressed astonishment at the 
message, giving some instructions for his office 
and asking for more particulars. To this mes- 
sage Mrs. Cornell replied: 

Your instructions will be acted- upon. Wired you 
first arrived. 

W. 

The second sentence of the message meant 
that the first boat, the Shinsei Maru, had ar- 
rived safely at Vladivostok, despite Crowley's 
previous assurances that it had been "fixed." 

117 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

This was what the Germans could not under- 
stand, and what had aroused their suspicions 
that Crowley had been deceiving them, and 
that he had possibly even been in somebody 
else's pay to "double cross" them. Their sus- 
picions were redoubled, as seems natural enough 
in the light of Mrs. Cornell's message of June 
29th to Crowley: 

All three arrived. I am waiting your advice. Some- 
thing queer. 

W. 

In other words, the other two boats, the Hazel 
Dollar and the Talthybius, had safely made 
Vladivostok. 

Meanwhile, Crowley had been having other 
troubles with Smith. One day he called for 
him at the Briggs Hotel in Chicago and found 
that he had disappeared. He learned that he 
had gone on to New York, leaving as his for- 
warding address simply "Station L, General 
Delivery, New York." Smith had two causes 
for anxiety. In the first place, he had not heard 
from his wife and did not know whether she 
had arrived safely. Consequently, on June 
1 8th he had telegraphed to a friend in New 
York: 

Can you give my wife's address. Important. An- 
swer paid, 

and received a reply the same day giving the 

118 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

address. He left Chicago at once and tele- 
graphed her from Buffalo the following evening: 

On train 36 Grand Central Depot 703 Sunday morning. 

Lewis. 

On Sunday afternoon Crowley telegraphed 
him from Chicago: 

What is the matter? Was surprised when found you 
had gone. Send me some word to Stratford Hotel. 

c. c. c. 

Smith did not reply until four days later, after 
he had learned that Crowley had gone on from 
Chicago to Detroit. He then telegraphed him: 

From Tacoma at Chicago. Address 308 East Fiftieth 
St., New York City. 

S. 

To Crowley the second sentence was plain 
enough, but the first one was unintelligible, 
so he wired Smith: 

Do not understand message. Let me know if you 
are coming here. Important. 

C. 

Smith did not dare to explain by telegraph 
what the matter was, but he had become con- 
vinced that detectives were on his trail and 
that he had been followed all the way from 
Tacoma to Chicago. He had suddenly de- 
cided to give them the slip and temporarily to 
break his connection with Crowley until 

119 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Crowley should be at a safer place for him to 
get in touch with him again. Also he wanted 
to "work" Crowley for some more money, 
consequently his reply on June 25th was: 

Cannot explain by wire. Would come but finances 
don't permit. Can't find wife. Answer. 

s. 

The latter part of this message was another lie 
because he was with his wife at the time, but 
it served to excuse his absence and baited the 
hook for more money. Crowley promptly bit 
and replied : 

I wired you fifty dollars. Come W. U. 

C. 

Corroborating this message was a service 
message of the Western Union operator to 
their New York Office at 24 Walker Street : 

Send notice to L. J. Smith, 308 East 50 St. Report 
delay of transfer payable at Grand Central Terminal. 

M. T. A. 

This telegram authorized the payment of $50. 

At the same time Crowley undertook to 
satisfy his German employers and to divert 
their minds from their previous disappointment 
by promising them some results on the new 
venture. He telegraphed Mrs. Cornell on 
June 25th: 

Tell him I expect S. by Sunday then action. 



120 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

The "him" was Von Brincken and the "S" 
was, of course, Smith. The promised " action" 
was action in the plot to dynamite the cattle 
trains at St. Thomas, Ontario. The next day 
Smith was on his way to Detroit, sending a 
message on the train to his wife to let her know 
he was all right : 

Arrived at Toledo O. K. 

L. 

Smith met Crowley in Detroit the following 
day and Crowley immediately telegraphed Mrs. 
Cornell further reassuring news for his German 
friends : 

He arrived and will be in action in day or two. Weather 
cool. All O. K. Give all clippings to him let me know 
if any word from Hazel and friend. Let him know of S. 

C. 

This message meant that Smith had arrived 
and would dynamite the stockyards in a day 
or two, that there was nothing exciting to 
report, and everything was going well. The 
"action" referred to was the blowing up of the 
cattle trains and the St. Clair Tunnel at Port 
Huron. The "clippings" were newspaper re- 
ports of the explosion on the scow at Tacoma 
which he wanted Mrs. Cornell to give to 
"him" that is to Von Brincken. "Let him 
know of S" meant: "Tell Von Brincken that 

121 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Smith is here." "Let me know if any word 
from Hazel and friend/' meant that Crowley 
had not given up hope that there was a mistake 
about the ships having made Vladivostok in 
safety and that he expected still to hear that 
Hazel (that is the Hazel Dollar) and "friend" 
(Talthybius)had been destroyed. 

The promised "action" was now, so Crowley 
thought, about to be produced. He was going 
to take Smith into Canada and cause some 
explosions. Consequently he telegraphed Mrs. 
Cornell on June 29th: 

Night letter follows. Go to Toronto few days. Don't 
wire until Friday. 

C. 
This announced the approaching trip for action. 

Crowley's scheme for "action" was this: 
Smith was to carry a suitcase full of dynamite 
and buy a ticket to St. Thomas, Ontario. 
Crowley was to carry a suitcase very similar 
in appearance, containing his travelling things, 
and was to buy a through ticket to Buffalo which 
would take him over the same route through 
Canada that Smith was to travel. This plan 
was actually worked out with one exception. 
Smith had a perfectly good imagination and 
a perfectly developed yellow streak in his 
courage. He still wanted the $300 monthly 
he was making and was determined to con- 

122 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

tinue getting it, but he had no relish at all for 
the pictures conjured in his mind of what 
would happen to him if he were discovered in 
Canada with a suitcase full of dynamite. He 
showed the dynamite packed in the case to 
Crowley. Then he went out into the suburbs 
of Detroit, got rid of the dynamite and, from 
a night watchman on a brick building in course 
of construction, bought a half-dozen bricks with 
which he filled the suitcase. This Irishman was 
afterward discovered and readily recalled both 
Smith and the circumstances, as he had been both 
puzzled]and amused at the idea of anybody buying 
bricks when he could easily have stolen them. 

As they had arranged, Smith boarded the 
Michigan Central train at Detroit late Sunday 
afternoon on July the 4th, and took a seat in 
the day coach. Crowley, who did not walk 
with him but followed close behind, took the 
seat behind Smith. Each, of course, stowed 
his suitcase at his feet. In a few minutes 
Smith walked to the front end of the car for a 
drink of water, whereupon Crowley stepped out 
on the platform at the rear. Smith came back 
and took Crowley's seat. Crowley returned 
and took Smith's seat. Shortly after, the cus- 
toms inspector came through the train with 
the conductor. His presence was the reason 
for this exchange of seats. As Crowley had a 

123 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

through ticket to Buffalo and would not leave 
the train, the customs inspector did not open 
his suitcase but simply pasted on it the through 
ticket label by which it would be identified 
by the other customs inspector who would 
board the train at Niagara Falls, when the train 
was about to reenter the United States at 
Buffalo. Hence the suitcase containing the sup- 
posed dynamite was not opened, and this was 
Crowley's plan. Crowley's own suitcase, now 
in the seat with Smith, was, of course, opened 
and examined. But it contained nothing but 
Crowley's personal belongings. An hour or so 
later the stratagem was repeated and Smith and 
Crowley resumed their original seats and got 
possession of their original baggage. Smith 
dropped off the train at St. Thomas at about 
eleven o'clock that night and Crowley went on 
through to Buffalo. 

Smith's nerve was no better this time than 
it had been before. In St. Thomas he emptied 
the bricks out of his suitcase, bought some 
travelling things to replace them, and took the 
train on to New York. In the meantime, Crow- 
ley had been having his troubles with the 
anxious and irritated Germans in San Francisco. 
There was an interchange of messages based 
on his need for money and on a break in the 
chain of communication between him and Bopp. 

124 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

Von Brincken had been made very unhappy 
by Bopp, as the latter was in a furious rage 
over the failure of the earlier plot at Tacoma, 
and had accused Von Brincken of everything 
from embezzlement to treachery and had made 
his life so miserable that he was glad of an 
excuse to get out of San Francisco. The imme- 
diate occasion he made for his leaving was 
an opportunity he had to go to Tia Juana, 
Mexico, just across the border from California. 
As both Crowley and his representative Mrs. 
Cornell had been positively forbidden to com- 
municate with Bopp, Crowley was at the moment 
considerably embarrassed by his inability to 
get in touch with headquarters. This explains 
the meaning of Mrs. Cornell's message of July 
2d, addressed to Crowley at Detroit: 

Am trying to find him. Waited to hear from you. 

W. 

She did manage to reach Von Brincken just 
before he left for Mexico late the same day, 
again telegraphing Crowley: 

He said: If you have plans go ahead with them. State 
amount required. Have been looking for results. 

W. 

Crowley replied the next morning: 

Tell him have planned action for within a week. No 
doubt able to make showing. Ans. 



125 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

His reply, however, was too late. Von Brincken 
had gone to Mexico, hence Mrs. Cornell tele- 
graphed : 

Cannot get in touch with him. Have tried everything. 
Wired you last night state amount required. Advise 

me. 

W. 

To this message Crowley replied: 

Don't worry. Did he get night letter thirtyth? Go 
to Buffalo to-morrow night. Statler. If you find him 
wire me. Don't send money until decided. 

C. 

The following day was the Sunday on which 
Crowley and Smith left Detroit together. Smith 
dropped off at St. Thomas and Crowley pro- 
ceeded to Buffalo. The following evening Crow- 
ley again telegraphed Mrs. Cornell from Buffalo: 

Nothing from you. Send me long letter to-night. 

C. 

Her reply was : 

Nothing from him since last Wednesday except one 
phone telling you state amount. Believe he is fighting 
for time. Don't commit yourself he has no authority. 
Told me he expected to take another position in a month 
as the atmosphere was intolerable. I gave up apartment 
Saturday morning. Will wire. 

Mrs. Cornell had been unable to reach 
Von Brincken for the very good reason that he 
was out of town. Her quotation of his remark 

126 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

that he "expected to take another position 
within a month" referred to Von Brincken's 
untenable position in the Consulate in San 
Francisco, and to his manoeuvres to get himself 
transferred to the New York end of the German 
spy system with his friend Von Papen, with whom 
he had become quite chummy on a recent visit 
of Von Papen's to the Pacific Coast. 

Two days later, however, Von Brincken had 
come back to San Francisco and Mrs. Cornell 
had a talk with him. Following this talk she 
telegraphed to Crowley, who was now in New 
York, stopping at the Wallick Hotel: 

Manager informed Bradford that experiences made 
were discouraging that outlook of lawsuit was too poor 
to justify advances for appeal. He is willing to offer 
lawyer contingent fee depending upon success only. 
Bradford privately advises see his friend in New York 
at once. Will send night letter. 

W. 

In this message Mrs. Cornell dropped into the 
code they had agreed to use before Crowley 
left San Francisco. "Manager" was Bopp, the 
head German in San Francisco. "Bradford" 
was Von Brincken. The " lawsuit " was the plot. 
The "lawyer" was Smith. "Bradford's friend 
in New York" was Von Papen. 

In her promised night letter Mrs. Cornell said : 

I asked for a hundred. They refused let him have it. 
He was indignant at refusal but decided it would be best 

127 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

A few days later, telegraphing from an office 
on the Exposition Grounds, in San Francisco, 
Crowley sent a message to Smith in New York: 

Two hundred to-morrow one hundred Tuesday both 

Postal. Come. 

C. 

Crowley had now managed to restore some 
degree of confidence in his work and Smith's, 
and had adopted his favourite method of divert- 
ing attention from past failures by setting forth 
a glowing prospectus of a new scheme. For 
a third time the Germans "bit." In his 
eagerness Crowley thereupon sent a rush mes- 
sage to Smith : 

Come to San Francisco at once. 

C. 

Smith promptly replied: 

Enroute to-night. 

S. 

He arrived in San Francisco six days later, 
telephoned to Crowley at the Gartland Hotel, 
and Crowley in turn telephoned to Bopp that 
Smith was on hand. That evening Crowley 
and Smith got together in Crowley's room and 
made out a statement of Smith's expenses. 
This statement was a work of art. At Crow- 
ley's suggestion Smith carefully "padded" the 
account so that they both made a handsome 
profit on that besides their salaries. They met 

130 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

Bopp in the Palace Hotel the following morning 
and he there paid the amount of the expense 
account, #845, in bills. 

Bopp and Crowley told Smith that they 
would probably have more work for him to do 
and for him to go back East. He left San 
Francisco on July 28th, telegraphing when he 
started to his wife at Cedarhurst, L. L: 

Remain one more week then meet me at Detroit. 
Answer at once. 

L. Occidental Hotel. 

She replied that she would meet him as directed. 
Smith went on to Detroit and stopped first 
at the Normandie Hotel and then moved out to a 
boarding house. 

In a couple of weeks Crowley had got fur- 
ther orders from Bopp and wrote a letter to 
Smith in Detroit, saying that Bopp would give 
#500 apiece for blowing up the powder works 
outside Gary, Ind., and Ishpeming, Mich., 
besides paying his salary of $300 a month and 
expenses. Before Smith had time to get the 
letter he got another telegram from Crowley: 

The matter in my letter is off. Write me letter 

C. 

What had happened was: Bopp had decided 
that Smith could get better results by working 
in California where he was more familiar with 

131 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

A few days later, telegraphing from an office 
on the Exposition Grounds, in San Francisco, 
Crowley sent a message to Smith in New York: 

Two hundred to-morrow one hundred Tuesday both 

Postal. Come. 

C. 

Crowley had now managed to restore some 
degree of confidence in his work -and Smith's, 
and had adopted his favourite method of divert- 
ing attention from past failures by setting forth 
a glowing prospectus of a new scheme. For 
a third time the Germans "bit." In his 
eagerness Crowley thereupon sent a rush mes- 
sage to Smith: 

Come to San Francisco at once. 

C. 

Smith promptly replied: 

Enroute to-night. 

S. 

He arrived in San Francisco six days later, 
telephoned to Crowley at the Gartland Hotel, 
and Crowley in turn telephoned to Bopp that 
Smith was on hand. That evening Crowley 
and Smith got together in Crowley's room and 
made out a statement of Smith's expenses. 
This statement was a work of art. At Crow- 
ley's suggestion Smith carefully "padded" the 
account so that they both made a handsome 
profit on that besides their salaries. They met 

130 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

Bopp in the Palace Hotel the following morning 
and he there paid the amount of the expense 
account, $845, in bills. 

Bopp and Crowley told Smith that they 
would probably have more work for him to do 
and for him to go back East. He left San 
Francisco on July 28th, telegraphing when he 
started to his wife at Cedarhurst, L. L: 

Remain one more week then meet me at Detroit. 
Answer at once. 

L. Occidental Hotel. 

She replied that she would meet him as directed. 
Smith went on to Detroit and stopped first 
at the Normandie Hotel and then moved out to a 
boarding house. 

In a couple of weeks Crowley had got fur- 
ther orders from Bopp and wrote a letter to 
Smith in Detroit, saying that Bopp would give 
#500 apiece for blowing up the powder works 
outside Gary, Ind., and Ishpeming, Mich., 
besides paying his salary of #300 a month and 
expenses. Before Smith had time to get the 
letter he got another telegram from Crowley: 

The matter in my letter is off. Write me letter 

C. 

What had happened was: Bopp had decided 
that Smith could get better results by working 
in California where he was more familiar with 

131 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

the powder plants and where he would be more 
closely under his direction and not under Von 
Papen's direction. After a discussion with 
Crowley, Bopp had agreed to a plan to have 
Smith return to California and get a job again 
in the California Powder Mills at Pinole, now 
owned by the Hercules Powder Company, and 
cause an explosion there. Following this agree- 
ment Crowley telegraphed Smith on August 30th: 

Delay in information you want also in getting Consent 
on other matter will know in few days and will advise 
you. Will recommend if you can get good title to place 
here and the one north you be given an amount. Round 
trip transportation be furnished no other expense allowed. 

Garrett. 

Crowley had used the name of Garrett several 
times and often received mail under this name 
at his hotel in San Francisco, z. The meat of 
this message was: "if you can, get good title to 
the one here" and "the one north." The 
"place here" was the California Powder Mills, 
and "the one north" was a powder mill of the 
iEtna Explosive Company outside Tacoma with 
which Smith was familiar as a result of his 
trip there at the time of the explosion on the 
scow. 
On September 7th Crowley telegraphed Smith: 

They cannot decide on matter. 



132 



A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 

Smith waited a week for a decision and then 
wired Von Shack again: 

I expect immediate and satisfactory answer from you. 
Crowley has my letter. 

L. J. Smith. 

The satisfactory answer did not come. The 
Germans in San Francisco had spent all they 
were willing to spend without getting any re- 
sult. Smith got a job in an automobile fac- 
tory in Detroit, and his wife returned to her 
vocation as a masseuse in a Turkish bath. 
Pretty soon they both began to "see things" — 
Mrs. Smith in particular. First she thought 
she saw Crowley following her in disguise on 
the street one night. Smith began to suspect 
also that they were being trailed by detectives 
in the employ of the Germans, and finally he 
feared both bodily harm and violence, and the 
possibility of the American Government hav- 
ing gotten wind of some of his activities and 
dogging his steps to arrest him. He finally 
decided that the safe thing to do was to turn 
State's evidence, and hence he wandered into 
the office of the United States Attorney and 
started various trains of investigation that ulti- 
mately sent Bopp, Crowley, Von Brincken, and 
Von Shack to two years in prison, and Mrs. 
Cornell to one year. Smith and his wife were 
given immunity for turning State's evidence. 

133 



CHAPTER VII 
German Codes and Ciphers 

SECRECY is, of course, the most important 
consideration in the German plots in this 
country. When Bernstorff wished to arrange 
with Berlin to give Bolo Pasha ten million francs 
to betray his country, he naturally did not write 
out his messages in plain English for every wire- 
less station on both sides of the Atlantic to 
read them as they went through the air. He 
did, to be sure, write the messages in English, 
and they looked plain enough — and innocent 
enough — but they meant something very dif- 
ferent from what they seemed to mean. And 
when it got down to the actual transfer of the 
money, another German agent in New York 
signed the messages, which likewise were not 
what they seemed. 

Those messages were in code. (They are 
reproduced and explained in this chapter.) 

Now code should not be confused with cipher. 
When some Hindus in New York, subsidized 
by Berlin, wished to write their plans to some 
other Hindus in San Francisco, concerning their 

134 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

common purpose of fomenting revolution against 
British rule in India, they wrote out messages 
that consisted entirely of groups of Arabic 
numerals. 

Those messages were in cipher. 

To any one but an expert, many code mes- 
sages look simple and harmless, and cipher 
messages usually look unintelligible and sus- 
picious. Yet, oddly enough, the cipher mes- 
sages are by far the easier to make out. In- 
deed, unless you have a copy of the code, code 
messages can almost never be translated, whereas 
a straight cipher message can almost invariably 
be unraveled by an expert, if you give him 
enough time and material. Hence, by people 
who know the subject (and nobody had mastered 
it so "thoroughly as the Germans), codes are 
used for secrecy, and ciphers are used simply 
as an added precaution and to delay the un- 
raveling of a message if, by any chance, the 
enemyjhas gotten possession of a copy of the code. 

German plot messages, therefore, are usually 
written out first in plain German, then coded, 
and the code then put into cipher. Such messages 
are called enciphered code. 

For an enemy to get them to make sense, 
he has first to decipher them, and then decode 
them. Any expert can decipher them — in time. 
Decoding them is a very different matter. 

135 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Before taking up some of the German code 
and cipher messages that have been translated, 
with dramatic results, it will be well to discuss 
codes and ciphers in general. 

A code is an arrangement by which two 
people agree, when exchanging messages, always 
to substitute certain words or symbols for the 
real words of the message. Thus, they might 
agree on these substitutions: 

a = the 
French ship = market 
sailed from New York = price 
sailed from Boston = quotation 
to-day = is 
for Marseilles = any even number 
for Bordeaux = any number with a fraction 

With such a code, a German spy in New York 
could cable a seemingly harmless message to a 
friend in Holland, such as: 

"The market price is no." 

That would mean, of course: 

"A French ship sailed from New York to-day for 
Marseilles." 

Whereas a very slight change in wording: 

"The market quotation is nof." 

would mean: 

"A French ship sailed from Boston to-day for Bor- 
deaux." 

136 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

Messages of that sort could be exchanged 
daily between a broker in Wall Street and a 
broker in Amsterdam, and, by the addition of 
a few more words, could be infinitely varied 



J. Kr. 307/W 

Ue'w York, den 10. April m*. 

42S1 4696 4366 90972 91660 4166 4311 2032 98600 4SSS 
91692 rait der 13G7 6122 8778 0266 8102 7004 7330 3734. 1S9Z 
8060 2646 91778 90210. E» wlrdgehor«air.st gobeten, aerngtrnKsn zu 
rerfahren und den Bfltrag der KrUsfir-»chricht«H8tolle ** b*l*e- 
tani Stapfangsbeechelnigung liegt em. 

K. V. St. 

den Xalserlichen Bctschnftor 

Hf>rrn Crafen von Bcrngtorff 

Washington, P. t. 



** M «r w-^g, ,* «-■ »*" *"" '"^ *> 

-Herr- John Devoy/hat hier.$600 eingezahlt/mit der Bitta 
//I*. f ?7 f „>/,- fat-jm* y)to i?** *r,* site xjw to?r j*no . 

sie telegraphlsch an Sir- Roger Ca*«5nent zu ifberweisen. Es wird 

gehoraamet'cebeten, demgemSas zu verf'ahren und den Detrag der 

g 
Krlegsjiacbricttenetelle zu belasten. Empgansbescheinlgung ll.egt 

«In. 



CODE MESSAGE TRANSMITTING MONEY TO SIR ROGER CASEMENT 
In English it reads: "Embassy. 307-16, New York, April 10, 1916. 
Mr. John Devoy has paid in $500 here with the request that they be 
transmitted telegraphically to Sir Roger Casement. You are respect- 
fully requested to proceed accordingly and to charge the amount to the 
Military Information Bureau. Receipt enclosed." 

137 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

and would look like perfectly legitimate com- 
mercial correspondence. In fact, most inter- 
national business before the war (the Govern- 
ment now requires that all messages appear 
in plain English) was carried on by coded 
cables which turned long messages into short 
groups of words that of themselves made 
gibberish. Several code books for business 
use were on the market, containing hundreds 
of pages of these arbitrary substitutions, which 
were useful, not for secrecy but for economy. 
A dozen words could be made to say what 
normally would require five hundred words. 

Ciphers, however, have almost always been 
resorted to when secrecy was desired. This 
sounds like a contradiction. But people who 
are not experts use them because they think 
they are more secret, since they look so. And 
experts us'e them when they are concerned 
only with temporary secrecy. They use them, 
then, because cipher messages can be written 
and translated (by one's correspondent) with- 
out any equipment, like a code book, and much 
more rapidly than code. Thus, if a general 
in the field wishes to send a message ordering 
a colonel to advance in two hours, he sends it 
in cipher, because it would take the enemy more 
than two hours to decipher the message even if 
he intercepted it immediately, and because after 

138 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

the two hours have elapsed the information in 
the message would be of no value to him. 

A cipher is the substitution of some symbol 
for a letter of the alphabet. The substituted 
symbol may be another letter — as writing e 
when you mean a. Or it may be a figure — 
as using 42 when you mean m. Or it may be 
an arbitrary sign — as * to mean c. In cipher, 
then, every word is spelled out, but the word 
Washington might be spelled x= II \ ? ! a: ° B 
if you had agreed that 



w=x 


n=! 


a= = 


g=A 


s= II 


t=: 


h = | 


o = ° 


i=? 


n = B 



That is called a substitution cipher, because 
some other letter or symbol is arbitrarily sub- 
stituted for every letter. 

But another kind is called a transposition 
cipher, because in this the letters of the alphabet 
are simply transposed by agreement — the 
simplest and most obvious example being to 
reverse the alphabet, so that z stands for a 
and 3; for b y etc. Such a transposition cipher 
would read : 

Alphabet of plain text abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 
Alphabet of cipher zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba 

139 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 




ZWT. 

Mtroh as, leie. 

'.'!> to to-dpy there hae been no eablegren fronr,th4neeaenger. to 
arranged three e«J» of oablee— — one for. eafe arrival, another fa* 
the possibility of delay and the third to "denote, that seaetllng had 
gone wrong* so, ee. wo have reoleed nono It Bust moan that the' party 
Is unlor restraint— prooably hold In Liverpool for examination, 
trnlaea they oould gat tho key of the cipher, it is unlikely t&tt 
even an export ooum dooipher the message for a considerable tlae, 
but our f riend s, are unaware ej^ tho qontente of the ggggaggy they 
will probably get the duplicate by April 8, as the messenger who 
too* it has never been euepeoted and ie not a passenger « Ho is 
never searched or questioned* Re- will oabeeon arrival* 

Another messenger will etart next Saturday end wita oable vk§ 
arrival. 

So far, the ohief difficulty la the failure to get the pro- 
position to our friends. In ease the enemy hae learned or eue- 
peots the protest we shall probably have some evidenoe in time 
to send warning to your people, but it ie well to lot then know 
that this hitoh hae ooourred. -, 



A letter from John Devoy, an Irish-American, exposing his hand in a 
plot with the Germans to foment revolution in Ireland 

and Washington would be spelled dzhsrmtglm. 

Perhaps the cleverest transposition cipher 
ever devised — it is so good that the British 
Army uses it in the field and, moreover, has 
published text books about it — is the very- 
simple "Playfair" cipher. First a square is 
drawn, divided into fifths each way. This 
arrangement gives twenty-five spaces, to con- 
tain the letters of the alphabet — / and / being 

140 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 



put in one square because there would never 
be any plain sentence in which it would not be 
quite obvious which one of them is needed to 
complete a word of which the other letters are 
known. 

Next a "key word" is chosen — and herein 
lie the cleverness and the simplicity of this 
cipher, because every time the key word is 
changed, the whole pattern 
of the alphabet is changed. 
Suppose the key word is 
Gardenia. It is now spelled 
out in the squares: 

The second A is left out, 
as there must not, of course, 
be duplicates on the key- 
board. Now the rest of the alphabet is written 
into the squares in their reg- 
ular sequence: 

That is the complete key- 
board. The method for us- 
ing it is this : 

The message is written 
out in plain text; for exam- 
ple: 

DESTROY BRIDGE AT ONCE 

(Only capital letters are commonly used in 
cipher work.) This message is now divided 

141 



G 


A 


R 


D 


E 


N 


IJ 







































G 


A 


R 


D 


E 


N 


IJ 


B 


C 


F 


H 


K 


L 


M 


O 


P 


Q 


s 


T 


U 


V 


w 


X 


Y 


Z 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

into groups of two letters, in the same order, so 
that it reads: 

DE ST RO YB RI DG EA TO NC EX 

(The X is added to complete the group and is 
called a null.) These groups of twos are now 
ciphered from the keyboard into other groups 
of twos, by the following method : 

Where two joined letters of the original mes- 
sage appear in the same horizontal row on the 
keyboard, the next letter to the right is sub- 
stituted for each. Thus, the first two letters 
of our message are DE. They occur in the 
same horizontal row on our keyboard. Con- 
sequently, for D we write E, and for E we go 
"on around the world" to the right, or back 
to the other end of the row, and write G for 
E. This gives us DE enciphered as EG. 

Where two joined letters of the original 
message appear in the same vertical row on the 
keyboard, the next letter below is substituted 
for each. 

Where two joined letters of the original 
message appear neither in the same horizontal 
nor the same vertical row on the keyboard, 
we imagine a rectangle with the two letters 
at the opposite corners, and in each case sub- 
stitute the letter found on the keyboard at 
the other corner of the same horizontal row. 

142 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

This looks complicated, but in reality is very 
simple. For example, take the third two- 
letter group of our message — RO. The rec- 
tangle in this case is 

RDE 
BCF 
LMO 

and for R we substitute E, and for O we sub- 
stitute L. 

Substituting our whole message by this system, 
it reads : 

Original DE ST RO YB RI DG EA TO NC EX 
Cipher EG TU EL XC AB EA GR UM IF RZ 

As telegraph operators are accustomed to 
send these gibberish messages in groups of 
five letters (so that they can check errors, 
knowing that when only four appear in a group, 
for example, something has been left out) these 
enciphered groups of twos are now combined 
into groups of fives, so that the finished cipher 
reads : 

EGTUE LXCAB EAGRU MIFRZ 

The foregoing looks extremely compli- 
cated, but the truth is that anybody, after half 
an hour's practice, can put a message into this 
kind of cipher ("Playfair" cipher) almost as 
fast as he can print the straight English of it in 
capital letters. And unless the person who reads 

143 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 



it knows the key word which determined the 
pattern on his keyboard, he would have to be an 
expert to decipher it, and even he could do it 
only after a good deal of work. , 

Another ingenious cipher is called the "Chess 
Board." First, a sheet of paper is ruled into 
squares exactly like a chess board — that is, a 
square divided into eighths each way. This 
arrangement gives, of course, sixty-four small 
squares. Then, by agreement between the 
people who intend to use this cipher, sixteen of 
these squares are agreed upon and are cut out 
of the sheet with a knife. Suppose, for example, 
this pattern is chosen: 



and the squares showing 
in white are cut out. 

Next, another sheet of 
paper is ruled into a 
chess board, of exactly 
the same size as the first. 
The perforated sheet is 
now laid on top of the 
second sheet, so that the 
squares on the one exactly cover the squares 
on the other. Now, with a pen or pencil, 
the plain text of the secret message is printed 
on the under sheet by writing through the 
perforations of the upper sheet, only one letter 
being written in each square. This, of course, 

144 



□■□■□□□□ 
□□■□■□□□ 
□□□■□■□□ 



□□□■□□□□ 
■□□□□□□ 

□HBEEEE 
□■□□□□□ 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 



permits the writing of sixteen letters of the mes- 
sage. 

Suppose the complete message is to be: 

"Authorize payment ten million dollars to 

buy copper for shipment to Germany." Then 

the lower sheet, after we have written through 

the perforations, will look like this : 

The perforated sheet 
is now turned to the right 
through one fourth of a 
complete revolution, so 
that the top of it is at 
the right side of the lower 
sheet and so that the two 
chess boards again 
"match up." This op- 
eration exposes, through the perforations, a new 
set of sixteen open squares on the lower sheet. 
The writing of the message is continued, and the 
lower sheet now looks like this (left) : 





A 




U 














T 




H 














o 




R 






I 




Z 








E 










p 










A 














Y 




M 


E 














N 












T 





A 


O 


U 


r 








i 


S 


A 


a 


U 


r 


c* 


^ 


> 


> 


r 


T 




H 






H 


> 


r 


T 


o 


H 


o 


d 


H 




r 




o 


- 


R 


Z 




^ 


r 


Z 


o 


~ 


R 


Z 


3 


I 




Z 


2 




»-H 


E 


W 


I 


S 


z 


z 


a 


~ 


E 


w 








P 






2 




~ 


d 


w 


p 


o 


O 


2 


D 


A 










r 




Y 


A 


Oh 


A 


H 


n 


r 


< 


Y 




M 


E 




O 








£ 


M 


E 


9 


o 


o 


2 


Z 


* 


N 


O 










T 


7* 


N 


O 


H 


X 


tt 


s 


T 



145 



s 


A 


D 


U 


L 


R 


R 


Y 


A 


L 


T 


O 


H 


O 


F 


T 


R 


L 


N 


O 


I 


R 


N 


E 


I 


M 


Z 


N 


P 


I 


E 


E 


I 


P 


E 


P 


G 


O 


M 


C 


A 


P 


Y 


T 


U 


L 


A 


Y 


H 


M 


E 


B 


O 


O 


M 


N 


R 


N 


O 


T 


T 


E 


S 


T 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Again the perforated sheet is turned to the right, 
and sixteen s more letters are written. Once 
more, and the whole sixty-four squares are uti- 
lized, looking like the last cut on the previous page. 
These letters are now put upright, like this. 

They are now read 
from left to right and 
from the first line down, 
like ordinary r reading 
matter. They are then 
grouped into fives for 
telegraphic transmis- 
sion, and an X added at 
the end to make an even 
five-group there. Thus the message, as trans- 
mitted, reads : 

SADUL RRYAL TOHOF TRLNO IRNEI 
MZNPI EEIPE PGOMC APYTU LAYHM 
EBOOM NRNOT TESTX 

When this message is received, it can, of course, 
be quickly deciphered by printing it out on a 
chess board and placing over it a sheet perfo- 
rated according to the prearranged pattern. 

This survey of codes and ciphers does not more 
than scratch the surface of the subject, nor more 
than suggest the almost infinite variations that 
are possible — in ciphers especially. It simply 
gives a groundwork for an understanding of the 
German secret messages now to be described. 

146 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 



'4\-et*U!/f 



*&■£ »M ki\%t Uft te E» VR A ^&T 




ioe i^OTa 












2,iVCI Ff^IT.I 






^t Won i V(5/xc 






EXTRACTS FROM A GERMAN CODE EXPERT'S BLOTTER 

Showing the use of capital letters in the actual work of enciphering a 

message, and the combined use of cipher and code 

Among the most interesting of these secret 
messages is the series of wireless telegrams 
by means of which the German money was paid 
to Bolo Pasha for the purchase of the Paris 
Journal — one of the principal episodes in the 
treasonable intrigue for which Bolo was recently 
executed by a French firing squad. These 
messages were in English, and meant exactly 
what they said, except for the proper names and 
the figures, which were code. To decode them, 
it was necessary only to make the following 
substitutions : 
William Foxley = Foreign Office 
Charles Gledhill = Count Bernstorff 
Fred Hooven = Guaranty Trust Company (New York) 
$500 =$500,000 

147 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

and to all other figures add three ciphers to 
arrive at the real amount. For example, one 
of these messages read: "Paid Charles Gledhill 
five hundred dollars through Fred Hooven." 
This meant: "Paid Count Bernstorff five hun- 
dred thousand dollars through Guaranty Trust 
Company." 







******* <+JZL ^Onr^JU. i\\^. 




&~ rt^^utt **-* *— i» *- 


*A**-^' 


•£*— Ccuur-tr J&.* - «»>/£^£**«-:« 




i ' II i 









BOLO'S HANDWRITING 
A letter written in New York to his bankers in transactions for the pur- 
chase of the Paris Journal, with German money, the crime for which he 
was shot 

148 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

The story of these messages is briefly this: 
Marie Paul Bolo started life as a barber, became 
an adventurer and, in the service of the Khedive 
of Egypt, received the title of Pasha for a finan- 
cial service which he rendered him. Returning 
to France as Bolo Pasha, he married two wealthy 
women and lived in grand style on their money. 
He became an intimate of Charles Humbert, 
another adventurer, who achieved political 
power by questionable methods and became a 
member of the French Senate. In the mean- 
time, the Khedive had been deposed by the 
British on account of his pro-Turkish (and hence 
pro-German) activities after the Great War be- 
gan. Abbas Hilmi joined the colony of ex- 
rulers in Switzerland, and there became a part 
of the German system of intrigue. He received 
money from the Germans and, after he had de- 
ducted his "squeeze" (which sometimes amount- 
ed to half the total), he paid over the rest to 
Bolo, to be used by Bolo, Humbert, and ex- 
Premier Caillaux in an effort to restore Caillaux 
to power and then to further the propaganda 
for an early and hence inconclusive peace. 

Either this method of supplying the French 
traitors with funds became too dangerous, or the 
Germans preferred to keep their gold and wished 
to use their credit in the United States to get 
American gold for this purpose. In any event, 

149 






WIRELESS yiA' sAYrma.- 
Deutsche' Bank Dltfelftioh Berlin* 

CojuntirvJott^e with * Uliaiu ■'gggfeg and .telegraph 
whether he has" plr.ped money at my dlBBOaaOritlS W&* 

.fcugo, $cnaldt 

Charge ; John <T.MeClem6nt 
March 6th,' 1916. 



: Wireless von Deutsche Bank/ Berlin, f^ 



en IS. Maertjl916. ., * 



^plying your cable about TSlnu K'l i KUiUlt^ toff iW IMwuli w ill 
receive money for our account you nay dispose according tor 
letters .tfoveaiber twentyfourth 19X4 to^ 4 ^**^^^ 4 ^^ 



X 






WIRELESS. TtA SAYVtLLE.. 

Dautscbe Bajvk Direktion Berlin . .*. /a, 

.Your wireieafr received jgald CluUlUi i QIuJIij ^, 
Q**kk,.ju*rf* /H stop Afww« 
f fivehundred dollars througw *rrt-«ee>*w» . QlmaTlM. requires 

further 'eleven hundred "dallnra which ehall^pay gradually 



«anarg*BWobR ..&.■ UfaCieiiiBnt 
March. 13th, 1916. 



X 



Wireless von Deutsche Bank,,,, Berlin 

You may dispose or] 
36Venteenthousand DoilaKs 




A TALE TOLD IN CABLEGRAMS 
Code messages in the Bolo Pasha case, explained in the accompanying 

pages 



15° 



Deutsche Bank Direction 
©srlin 
T*ro Unri e l l j Ut a il a eb e nt . Ci t yb a na ii a to p. pa id- 
further twohundrgd Ddlara 






Huga Schmidt. 
March IS; ,1918 



VTISELESS VIA SAYVILLE. 



Deutsche iffank Direction. , Berlin 

• ' /Tt^ti paid i safirtjca i,lumiUl 'further, threehundred- 

*yO Hu£0 ScTjmlit' 

Charge?- -Jbhn-HV-McClemant. 
March 20th. 1916. 



flxreless via, Sayville 



j^ Deutsche Bank Direktlon A* 

' Berlin, ^-f ""* 

n » nf » i>rnngmnn nm» nr»lir a> s hall I a i sa oun* J t a p dtiitjiataA 

i7fn.,j.ii^.-Bnm.,.hi.w "Hi n x -1i-innTn"n""rn"cfrl i rr * 
i/j3f Ola i jliill .further 1 twohundred dollars 
*» — 8"~>*ff- *•* <""> Hu £ a Schmi 

< ^ Sferch 24, 1916 



X 



WIRELESS VIA SAYVILLE 
DeetsChe Bank Dirslctior. Berlin 



- r n i ajjuUajJXfc 



/? 



Raid- "'i i i l ii "Inrllii 1 fniirhnnTrrrT ri^tiTytriri'in" 

aha If dollars aa final payment Ttrp - null j i n i r nffTTm nTriii rt 

fcee jr>»o pnnow t my eilii i r iupmnir. 

flugo-SchfflidV 

Charge: 'John H. .MeClemenfc 

April 1st. 1916. ^^ 



151 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Bolo Pasha appeared in New York early in 
March, 19 16. Strangely enough, this French 
citizen bore letters of introduction to several 
Germans. The most important was addressed 
to Adolf Pavenstedt, who was senior partner in 
G. Amsinck & Company and for many years a 
chief paymaster of the German spy system in 
this country. Through Pavenstedt, Bolo met 
Hugo Schmidt, a director of the Deutsche Bank 
of Berlin, a government institution, who had 
been sent to this country soon after the war 
broke out to provide complete cooperation be- 
tween the older representatives of the Deutsche 
Bank here and the management in Berlin. 

Through Pavenstedt, as messenger, Bolo also 
got in touch with Bernstorff, and arranged the 
details of the plan by which Bolo was to receive 
10 million francs from the German Government. 
He was to use this money to buy the Paris Jour- 
nal, which would then be edited by Senator 
Humbert, who agreed to change its editorial 
policy to favour an immediate peace. As the 
Journal is one of the most powerful dailies in 
France, with a circulation among more than a 
million and a half readers, the sinister possibili- 
ties of this scheme are readily seen. 

Bernstorff committed the financial details to 
Hugo Schmidt. He, in turn, asked Berlin by 
wireless for suitable credits in American bank- 

i5 2 




MR. A. BRUCE BIELASKI 
Who, as Chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, 



organized and managed the Government agents 
plots and captured the plotters 



rho unraveled the German 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

ing houses. These were arranged with the 
Guaranty Trust Company and the National 
Park Bank — for many years American corres- 
pondents of the Deutsche Bank. The amounts 
were then credited to G. Amsinck & Company, 
of which Pavenstedt had long been senior part- 
ner. He, in turn, placed them, with the New 
York branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, to 
the account of Bolo Pasha. As the exchange 
rate at the time ran in favour of American dol- 
lars and against French francs, the 10 million 
francs (normally equal to about 2 million dol- 
lars) which Bolo got, required only $1,683,500 
of American money — which is just the sum of 
the amounts named in the wireless messages. 

The Journal was actually bought by Bolo and 
Humbert, but before they could do much damage 
with it, they were arrested, and Bolo has already 
been executed. 

The Hindus in this country, who were plot- 
ting with the Germans the revolution that 
should destroy the British rule in India, used 
two systems for their secret messages. The 
first was this substitution cipher : 

1234567 

1 A B C D E F G 

2 H I J K L M N 

3OP.QRS T U 
4 V W X Y Z 

153 



J. JBr. 356/16 

IBB gqftola . Saa'York, den 17. April. 1916. 



729G 1703 4098 6279 2810 m .90166 folfiender BemsrkuoeMU 
"72(34 450? 94076 4769 Mr 2668 9081* Wtsn 90987 93285 
0S19 90452. Andernf alls. 4621 93437 imstand#, 8122 91778 
90404, Bonn euch erst 6121 4156 2613 47(2. Deshalfc. 4621 
4410 6367. 1975 sollt* be«tehen BtuiKchst 4607 6602 0311 
2513 4507 93437 90309 3215 0311 3926 693* 94077 7284. 
1777 »*nn in* nd m*alich 5294 90G26 91160 6071 4607 
•4076, svefttueli 2I0C 2637 c471 90987 5608. .1974 »0rd» 
7706j9d326 94077 4105 3000 93437 6995 6636, JBOlfU 0334 
8334:3435 90086 1444 0265 94077 5225, 0122 91809 0204 
Olv.i. 93437. 2684 1906 72Q4 Jcann daher 1883 6121 2683 # » 
2637 bittet in dlasem Slnm 6778 6121 92884 91778 Jill. 

6132 8187 

An Se. Excellr.nz 

den fciloerllc en Sot^ciafter 

H»rrn C: affsn tfon Bcr»»tonff 

Washington," P. .C. 



THE COHALAN-IRISH REVOLUTION MESSAGE 
Above is the code message from Von Papen's office in New York 
to Bernstorff, transmitting a message from Justice Cohalan, of the 
Supreme Court of New York, advising the Germans upon the best 
means to make Sir Roger Casement's revolution in Ireland a success. 
On page 155 is the message written out and coded for transmission. In 
English it reads as follows: "No. 335 — 16 very secret New York, April 
17, 1916. Judge Cohalan requests the transmission the following 
remarks: 'The Revolution in Ireland can only be successful if sup- 
ported from Germany. Otherwise, England will be able to suppress 
it, even though it be only .after hard struggles. Therefore, help is 



154 



Rlehtor Cohalan/oreucht un Uebermittlnng folgender Bemerkmnngen: 
." >>-#y yr,7 jf^(, v 7 t 9 „CU 303/ ?/>f? 7 

Revolution In Irland kann nur erfolgreich pain, nenn «** von 

7 Deutsonland aus unteretQtzt w*rd. Andernfalle lar England imatande, 

f/»- V7jt 'W<f </*'/ WSJ- *JVJ <*?i-y 

sie su unterdruoken, wenn auch arst nach hapten Kanpf en. . Deahalb 

V*W W/* ii.C~) 'Iff H r 07 HoX oif >s<j 

let Hllf o nctwendig. Dlese eollte beatehen sonfichst In Uxt tangrlf f en 
*irtf ?Jfoj feiif **-><r <*->" jf>j- s-fj-* Jy«77 ;><>* 

in England und Flottendiveraion gleichzeltlg nit lriacner Revolution 

'777 " ,„ ^r* <}o*^(. ?„j-a . i, ? , ■ r.-e-j 

Data venn lrgend nSgliob Landung Truppen nasi Waf f en Kanitlon in 

9**/i vJ#£ ~Ul/' £>,■>, f ffy jf^ /} 7 * 

Irland, eventuell einiger Offiziar von Zeppelins. Dies wttrde 
•pjU f*^vfc 9**7?! V"S~ "it** fJfiy ^■f'-. , <r£j£> 

'/Schlieseung IriBOher HSfen gegen England laSglic'n 'nachen, Eowie 
oil* *3i* 3fti <?D+fi /«yy 6*tr fW? *"*■*;*" o/^- 

anlage Statlonen fOr. Tauchbote an irlocher KUeta, AbaohnMCoag 
9'**1 <>*¥ t,y> fjy-r? * 

Zufuhr Rthrungsnlttel naoh England. < 
fc4J7. *V* £n-t -1 *■£■**!■ *'9?* "Z' 

£f bittev. in dleaajB JSinnel^ach. Berlin xa berlohtan* 



'Erf els der Revolution kann daher den Krieg ent.scheiden* 



m* 



P-rt3 



y/;v Ittj 



e>M> 



necessary. This should consist primarily of aerial "attacks in England 
and a diversion of the fleet simultaneously with Irish revolution. Then, 
if possible, a landing of troops, arms/j and ammunition in Ireland, and 
possibly some officers from Zeppelins. This would enable the Irish 
ports to be closed against England and the establishment of stations 
for submarines on the Irish coast, and the cutting off [of the supply 
of food for England. The success of the revolution may therefore 
decide the war.' He asks that a telegram to this effect be sent to Berlin. 
5132 8167 0230 To His Excellency Count von Bernstorff, Imperial Ambas- 
sador, Washington, D. C." 



155 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

The message, "Leave San Francisco" would be 
written, in this cipher, as follows: 

25 15 11 41 15 35 11 27 16 34 11 27 13 22 35 13 31 

by giving each letter of the message the number 
to the, left of it, combined with the number above 
it. 

The other system used by the Hindus was a 
book code. They agreed upon a small English 
dictionary of a certain edition, and wrote from 
it messages that were also groups of numbers, 
after this fashion: 625-2-1 1 27-1-36 45-2-20 
and so on. The first figure in each group was 
the number of the page on which the word would 
be found, the second figure gave the column, 
and the third figure was the number of the word 
in the column, counting from the top of the 
page. 

But perhaps the most dramatic of all the 
intercepted messages (except the Luxburg and 
Zimmerman notes, of which the story cannot 
yet be told) were those which revealed the part 
played by well-known Irish- American leaders 
in the ill-fated Casement revolution in Ireland. 
The story of the Casement expedition is too 
familiar to need to be retold. And comment 
upon the political morals of Justice Cohalan 
and John Devoy becomes superfluous in the 
light of these messages. American citizens 

1S6 



GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 

(one of them signally honoured with public 
office in New York), both held their Irish blood 
superior, in their duty of loyalty, to the United 
States, using their citizenship as a cloak under 
which to strike at Great Britain, which has been 
for a quarter century the chief bulwark of this 
country against Germany's plan to conquer us 
and to impose upon our country the most hateful 
tyranny in the history of the world. 



157 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Tiger of Berlin Meets the Wolf 
of Wall Street 

FRANZ VON RINTELEN was the German 
tiger who missed his spring. He was the 
most powerful, the most dangerous, agent of the 
Kaiser in the United States : and to-day he nurses 
his hatred of us behind prison bars. But tie 
did not retire to confinement until after our 
Government completed an extremely difficult 
and tedious investigation that was made nec- 
essary by his care in concealing the insidious 
work of propaganda and destruction in which 
he had engaged. 

Rintelen was a tiger in the implacable hatred 
he bore this country and in the ferocity with 
which he carried that hatred into action. Sent 
to America in 1915 to hinder the shipment of 
munitions to the Allies, he sought first to poison 
the press, then to corrupt labour, and, not con- 
tent with these things, he finally tried to hire 
thugs to burn, to dynamite, and to assassinate, 
where other persuasions failed; and he did suc- 
ceed in setting fire to thirty-six ships at sea, 

1S8 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

causing millions of dollars of loss, and imperil- 
ing hundreds of human lives. 

Rintelen had, however, the other side of the 

tiger's character — its graces. When the 

made port at New York on April 3, 191 5, it 
bore as passenger one Emil Gasche, a Swiss. 
The moment Gasch6 passed the customs officers 
Gasche* ceased to exist, and in his place appeared 
handsome young Von Rintelen, unexpectedly 
arrived in America for his fourth visit and re- 
newing pleasant acquaintanceships in society and 
in Wall Street. He was "the same old chap," 
to quote his own description of himself in one 
of his letters — rich, of a family long accustomed 
to riches; well-bred, of a family long proud of 
its aristocratic connection with the Imperial 
Court at Berlin (his father had long been the 
equivalent of our Secretary of the Treasury); 
young, the youngest of the chief bankers of 
Germany; handsome, with the good looks that 
come of regular features and of a slender frame 
hardened by athletics and made distinguished 
by the bearing of an officer; a sportsman, who 
raced his yacht in the Emperor's regattas at Kiel 
— an affable, cultivated, witty, accomplished 
man of the world. No wonder he had been 
popular on his former visits. On one of them 
he had opened in New York a branch of the 
Deutsche Bank, one of the greatest of the gov- 

159 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

ernment-controlled banks of Germany, and on 
another he had widened these financial relation- 
ships with Wall Street. He had travelled the 
country over and knew people everywhere; and 
he knew about hundreds more, even to their 
private affairs in money and politics and those 
intimate weaknesses that pass into the gossip of 
the smoking-room. He spoke the language with 
only the slightest accent but in its purest form, 
and was adept in our peculiar kind of humour — 
altogether, a fine and likable fellow, who liked us. 

Until the war. And until the Germans, stung 
by the lost illusions of a quick and glorious vic- 
tory, facing the gray outlook of a long and bitter 
struggle, looking about for some one to blame for 
their plight, and wearied of "strafeing" Eng- 
land, found a new narcotic in a hatred of Amer- 
ica., America, that made the cartridges and 
shells "that "patched up^the ;unpreparedness ' of 
France and Britain and Russia, which Germany 
had calculated as one of the factors in the equa- 
tion of victory. America,* that — as their rising 
rage made their voices shriller— "is murdering 
our sons and brothers on every battlefield from 
Switzerland to the sea for the sake of blood- 
bought gold." 

This cry became an article of fanatical faith 
to the German people. It became likewise 
a very practical problem to the hard-headed 

160 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

leaders in Berlin. If they could cut off this 
supply of munitions, the Allies could be beaten. 
There was no hope of cutting it off at sea — the 
British Navy would attend to that. It must 
be stopped at its source: stopped in America, 
by a made-to-order public opinion, or by cor- 
ruption, or by violence — but stopped. 

"Whom shall we send to America ?" was 
their problem. Rintelen was chosen. He could 
be trusted — he was a director of the Deutsche 
Bank, he knew America. He was given credit 
at the Hamburg-American Line office in New 
York for $547,000, authority for as many millions 
more as he wanted, independent powers as 
great as the German Ambassador's at Wash- 
ington, the instructions of the German Govern- 
ment, and the blessing of the Fatherland. 

An American traitor in Berlin gave Rintelen 
his cue for operations in America. This man's 
name is known, and will one day be written 
alongside Benedict Arnold's, but to disclose 
it now would interfere with more practical 
efforts for his mortal punishment. Part of 
that punishment he is already enduring — he is 
still in Germany. This traitor told Rintelen 
that the most useful man in America for his 
purpose was David Lamar, of New York. 
Rintelen fixed that name in his memory, and 
left Berlin. 

161 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

His first barrier was the old, old barrier to 
German conquest, the British blockade. Rin- 
telen ran that under cover of the Swiss pass- 
port, under the name of Gasche\ 

Arrived in New York on April 3d, Rintelen 
lost no time in getting acquainted with Lamar. 
He disclosed to him his mission to this country 
and the money he had to execute it. The 
Tiger of Berlin met the Wolf of Wall Street. 

And how the Wolf's eyes must have glistened, 
for he was at the leanest of the hungry days 
which regularly followed seasons of opulence 
in the ups and downs which varied the career 
of this extraordinary man. For Lamar was, 
and is, an extraordinary man. Endowed by 
nature with a fascinating personality and with 
a brilliant mind, which he had enriched by study, 
a man capable of great things, he was possessed 
by that strange perversity which often afHicts 
men of exceptional cleverness — he would rather 
make one dollar by adroit crookedness than a 
million by unexciting honesty. Perhaps his 
origin affected his character — he declined, on 
the witness stand, to give his true name and 
parentage on the ground that to do so would 
bring disgrace upon persons still living. He 
entered Wall Street as a young man from 
nowhere, and at first gave promise of a brilliant 
and honourable career. He early made his mark 

162 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

in finance. He was employed by J. P. Morgan 
& Company and other great banking concerns, 
and in those days of his legitimate activities 
amassed a large fortune. But this was dis- 
sipated in gambling on the stock market, and 
then Lamar gravitated to the gutter. For 
years it was a by-word on the Street that if 
you wanted a clever man to do a crooked job, 
David Lamar was the man you were looking 
for. He had the brains to do it right, he had the 
presence to "get away with it," and he would 
do anything for money. 

These traits had got him into trouble shortly 
before Rintelen met him. When the Pujo Com- 
mittee of Congress was investigating the "money 
trust" several years ago, some crooked brokers 
in Wall Street wanted some inside information 
that was going to affect the price of certain 
stocks in which they were interested. They 
could not get this information by legitimate 
means, and so they adopted Lamarian means. 
Lamar knew that a member of Congress was 
entitled to ask for this information. Mr. Mit- 
chell Palmer was a Member of Congress. Lamar 
had one of his devious inspirations. He called 
up a banker's office, got the man there who 
knew what Lamar wanted to know, declared 
that he was Mr. Palmer, and demanded the 
information — and got it. Lamar repeated the 

163 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

exploit several times. But once too often. He 
was detected, arrested and tried, convicted, 
and on December 3, 1914, was sentenced to 
two years' imprisonment for the crime of imper- 
sonating an officer of the Government. He 
appealed the case on the ground that a Repre- 
sentative in Congress was not "an officer of 
the Government/' When Rintelen met him 
the following April, Lamar was out on bail 
pending the decision on this appeal. 

Lamar was then in desperate straits. Bad 
luck had followed him in the Street for two 
years, and had crowned his misfortunes with 
this expensive trial and threatened imprison- 
ment. He owed money everywhere for personal 
expenses; the merchants with whom he traded 
had stopped his credit; he had descended to 
borrowing from his friends in sums as small as 
two dollars at a time. Then he met Rintelen, 
who was on fire with a passion that blinded him 
to consequences and who flourished before the 
eyes of the famished Wolf a half million dollars 
of real money. Here was manna fallen from 
heaven. 

"Could Lamar help Rintelen!" With his 
most convincing eloquence, Lamar assured him 
that he could. Never had Rintelen been better 
advised, so Lamar declared to him, than when 
his friend in Berlin had given him his name, 

164 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

Far he had friends in Washington, he whispered, 
men powerful in the Government. And friends 
among the labouring people, the men whose 
hands made those munitions Rintelen had come 
to stop, and whose hands might be paralyzed 
by the clever use of brains and money. Lamar 
would supply the brains: Rintelen would sup- 
ply the money. The Wolf saw good hunting 
ahead. 

Lamar laid before Rintelen a scheme. They 
would capitalize the American passion for peace: 
they would capitalize in particular the labouring 
man's aversion to war. A section of opinion 
among labouring men held that wars were 
instigated by capitalists for gain, and were fought 
by labouring men who gave their lives to make 
good the selfish ambitions of the rich. And one 
of the American people's deepest convictions 
was that war was an odious moral crime; and 
that universal peace was attainable by the pur- 
suit of moral ideals. 

Lamar declared, then, that by working 
through his friends in labour, he could organize 
the workers of America so that they would re- 
fuse ~to work on the implements of destruction 
of "capitalistic" war. And that, by working 
through his friends in the Government, he 
could create a national sentiment that would 
force Congress to place an embargo on muni- 

165 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

tions. But these things would cost money. 
Lamar never forgot money. 

Now, we see a sudden transformation in Lamar's 
circumstances. The frayed debtor _ appeared 
in his old haunts garbed in the most fastid- 
ious selections of the tailor; the accumulated 
debts of years were paid; the subway and the 
street car gave way to automobiles — and Lamar 
was particular that the garage should supply 
only the fine car that was father to the Liberty 
motor. He moved his family from a cheap 
apartment in New York to a fine house at Pitts- 
field, Mass. His own quarters were the hotels 
Astor and Belmont in New York, the Willard in 
Washington, the La Salle in Chicago, the Clay- 
pool in Indianapolis. Things were looking up. 

Lamar carried other men with him on his 
rising tide of fortune. Frank Buchanan, labour 
Representative in Congress from the Seventh 
District of Illinois (North Chicago), likewise 
became a traveller and the patron of exclusive 
hotels. Henry B. Martin, who eked out a 
precarious living in the lobbies of Congress, 
after a dubious career as an officer of the Knights 
of Labour in the 'nineties, framed his wizened 
figure in a new and luxurious setting. H. 
Robert Fowler, the splendid high light of whose 
gray life as a half-lawyer, half-farmer, in a 
country town in Illinois, was expiring in the last 

166 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

days of a term in Congress, was suddenly re- 
vived, before his final extinguishment, by the 
light glittering from anonymous gold. Herman 
J. Schulteis, whose talents, insufficient for suc- 
cess in the law, had been more profitably em- 
ployed in the defunct Anti-Trust League (of 
which more later), rose rapidly in the monetary 
scale. 

These men were the instruments Lamar used 
in his scheme to stop the munitions industry and 
to get Rintelen's money. That scheme was to 
build up a great political organization of labour- 
ing men and farmers. This organization would 
oppose the making and shipment of munitions; 
it would exert pressure to compel workers to 
abandon the factories, and it would exert pres- 
sure to compel Congress to declare an embargo 
on the shipment of arms. This organization was 
labelled "Labour's National Peace Council." 

Lamar, fortified with Rintelen's money, 
launched his scheme in Washington. This scheme 
was an inspiration of genius. Able lawyers 
have declared that no cleverer conspiracy has 
ever come to their attention. Its beauty was 
its simplicity. Rintelen dealt with no one but 
Lamar — the other leaders never saw him, and 
most of them never heard of him until after the 
scheme was exposed by the Government. In 
his turn, Lamar operated entirely through 

167 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Martin. To Martin he gave his instructions to 
see labour leaders, to organize the fake Peace 
Council, to hold its camouflage "convention," 
to flood the country with lecturers and printed 
matter urging an embargo on munitions. And 
through Martin he paid the bills. 

Lamar and Martin were old associates. 
They had worked together in the Anti-Trust 
League, another of the creations of Lamar's 
restless mind. The Anti-Trust League origi- 
nated in the feverish 'nineties, when the country 
had its fears that the growth of great corpora- 
tions spelled the control of the Government by 
monopolies. The League had its days of promi- 
nence when it was financed by big interests 
that used it to fight other big interests to get the 
things they both wanted. But in 1915 the 
League was a skeleton, consisting of Lamar, 
Martin, Schulteis, and a few others, held to- 
gether by the bond of small salaries drawn 
from some source that preferred to remain un- 
known. 

When Martin undertook to organize Labour's 
National Peace Council, under the direction 
of Lamar, the first man he approached was 
Frank Buchanan. Buchanan was labour's lead- 
ing champion on the floor of Congress. He 
had been president of the international union 
of the structural iron workers, and he had earned 

168 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

the confidence of organized labour, and the 
friendship of Samuel Gompers, the patriarch of 
organized labour. 

Lamar, Buchanan, and Martin, assisted by- 
Fowler and Schulteis, engineered a mass meeting 
of workingmen in Chicago in June, 1915, at 
which resolutions were adopted calling for a 
convention of labourers and farmers at Washing- 
ton to protest against the traffic in munitions. 
The same men, with this " mandate" behind 
them, met in Washington on June 22d, and or- 
ganized Labour's National Peace Council. They 
prepared printed appeals, in the high language 
of humanitarianism, addressed to the labour 
unions and the granges, and mailed them by the 
ton to all parts of the country. They offered 
to pay all travelling expenses and for lost time 
to delegates which these bodies should send to a 
convention to be held in Washington on July 
31st and August 1st. 

As a preliminary to this convention, Martin 
paid labour leaders and other speakers to go 
into all sections of the United States and ad- 
dress labour unions and granges. Probably 
all these speakers acted in good faith. They 
were pacifists, and when they got an oppor- 
tunity to preach their doctrine, they accepted 
it. The opportunity seemed legitimate enough 
— the name of Frank Buchanan as a sponsor 

169 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

of the movement was sufficient. Their audi- 
ences, too, were sincere. Workmen and farm- 
ers had before their eyes the contrast of their 
own peaceful land with a Europe drenched in 
blood. The blessings of peace were never more 
apparent. They sent delegates gladly to a 
meeting that seemed designed to perpetuate 
those blessings. 

But Samuel Gompers opposed the conven- 
tion of Labour's National Peace Council. He, 
too, was a pacifist — had for years taken a leading 
part in the movement for international peace. 
But Gompers was a thoughtful man as well. 
And experienced. And wise. He told Bu- 
chanan some things Buchanan should have told 
himself. Buchanan came from Chicago to At- 
lantic City to meet Mr. Gompers and upbraid 
him for his opposition to the Council. Mr. Gom- 
pers gave him some fatherly advice. In effect, 
he said: 

"Frank, you have earned a good name in 
labour. We are proud of you, and we trust 
you. You are at life's meridian, with years of 
useful service ahead. But listen to an old man, 
who sees the shadows growing very long, and 
who has watched many movements come and 
go. You are in wrong. This scheme is bad. 
There is too much easy money being passed 
around in it. Labour hasn't got money to spend 

170 " 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

like this. Somebody who has not labour's inter- 
ests at heart is putting up that money. 

"And take the Council's aims themselves. 
Suppose you succeed in stopping the manu- 
facture of munitions — what will happen to 
labour? Two years ago, our boys were walking 
the streets, begging for a job. To-day, every 
man of them has work, and wages are going up. 
War work has done that. Do you want to stop 
the opportunity of labour to make a living?" 

But Gompers's eloquence left Buchanan cold. 
In the face of his pleadings and advice, Bu- 
chanan accepted $2,700 from Martin in the 
following six weeks. He saved his face at the 
last minute by resigning the presidency of 
Labour's National Peace Council the day before 
the convention met. 

The convention met in Washington on July 
31st, at the New Willard Hotel. Its members 
were impressed, as it was intended that they 
and the country in general should be impressed, 
by the sonorous voice and important presence 
of Hannis Taylor, former American Minister 
to Spain and author of text books on consti- 
tutional and international law, such as "The 
Origin and Growth of the English Constitution" 
and "International Public Law." He made an 
opening address in which, from his heights of 
knowledge, he solemnly declared that munitions 

171 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

shipments were in violation of international 
law. His address was largely devoted to assur- 
ances to his hearers that he was an authority 
on such matters and that they could take his 
opinion as disposing of the legal aspect of this 
question. Mr. Taylor was there to lend dis- 
tinction to the gathering, and he left no doubts 
in their minds that he thought he was doing it. 

But when the delegates got down to business, 
there was trouble. The farmer delegates became 
suspicious — they had vague fears of the source 
of the money that was paying the bills; they 
did not like the company they found themselves 
in. They first declined to bind their constitu- 
ents to the resolutions that were offered: then 
they left the convention. 

On the second day, the labour delegates 
became equally restless. Buchanan had with- 
drawn. The delegates who used the oppor- 
tunity of being in Washington to call on 
Mr. Gompers came away from his office with 
heavy hearts. Returning to the Willard, they 
saw the machinery being manipulated by the 
descredited Martin and Schulteis. "What have 
these fellows got to do with us?" they asked 
one another. And then they asked "these 
fellows" quite bluntly, "Who's putting up the 
money for this show?" Martin, backed to the 
wall of the Willard bar by their insistent demand 

172 



THE TfGER AND WOLF MEET 

for an answer, replied with an evasive, "What 
difference does it make?" And when they 
shouted that it made a profane lot of difference, 
he answered defiantly that it was all right 
"even if it's German money." 

That finished the labour delegates. They, too, 
went home. 

But the ringleaders had put out a resound- 
ing resolution calling for an embargo on muni- 
tions. And though the convention had fizzed 
out, it had done an enormous lot of harm. 
Thousands of labouring men and farmers had 
been indoctrinated with a specious pacifism 
that was reflected later in the attempts to evade 
the Conscription Act when we entered the war. 
The Government to-day is contending with 
the moral antagonisms aroused in certain sections 
of the country by the orators and writers of 
Labour's National Peace Council. 

In this moral infection, the work of Hannis 
Taylor played an important part. He wrote 
legal opinions for the Council, declaring that 
the traffic in munitions was unconstitutional. 
He received $700 for this work. These opinions 
were printed and distributed broadcast, and 
did much harm. More recently, Taylor was 
counsel for Robert Cox, the Missouri draft 
registrant who sued to restrain General Leonard 
Wood from sending him with his regiment to 

173 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

France. On his behalf, Hannis Taylor con- 
tended^ that the Conscription Act was uncon- 
stitutional, asserting that the only power of 
Congress to call out troops was under the 
militia clause of the Constitution which reads: 
"To execute the laws of the Union, suppress 
insurrections and repel invasions." This meant, 
so Taylor contended, that no citizen could be 
sent, against his will, outside the United States 
to fight its battles. 

This absurd doctrine, which would force us 
to fight this war on our own soil instead of 
allowing us to defend ourselves in Europe against 
German aggression, was promptly punctured 
by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
In his brief before that Court Hannis Tay- 
lor used language so violent that the counsel 
for the Government asked that it be expunged 
from the record. Taylor in his brief accused 
the President of being a "dictator," of seizing 
powers "in open defiance of the judgments " 
of the Supreme Court, and of demanding "such 
an aggregation of powers as no monarch ever 
wielded in any constitutional government that 
ever existed." 

The decision of the Supreme Court, affirming 
the Government's right to draft its citizens 
for service overseas, was delivered by Chief 
Justice White. That stern old veteran of the 

174 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

Lost Cause in our Civil War, speaking with the 
aloofness and dignity of that august Court, in 
measured terms expressed an opinion of Mr. 
Hannis Taylor that is worth repeating. He 
said: 

. . . we must notice a suggestion made by the 
Government that because of impertinent and scandalous 
passages contained in the brief of the appellant the brief 
should be stricken from the files. Considering the pas- 
sages referred to and making every allowance for intensity 
of zeal and an extreme of earnestness on the part of 
counsel, we are nevertheless constrained to the conclusion 
that the passages justify the terms of censure by which 
they are characterized in the suggestion made by the 
Government. But despite this conclusion whictTwe re- 
gretfully reach, we see no useful purpose to be subserved 
by granting the motion to strike. On the contrary, we 
think the passages on their face are so obviously in- 
temperate and so patently unwarranted that if as a result 
of permitting the passages to remain on the files they 
should come under future observation, they would but 
serve to indicate to what intemperance of statement an 
absence of self-restraint or forgetfulness of decorum will 
lead and therefore admonish of the duty to be sedulous 
to obey and respect the limitations which an adhesion to 
them must exact. 

In all the operations of Labour's National 
Peace Council, including its convention, Lamar 
kept in the background, as he knew labour had 
no reason to own him or to love him. Buchanan 
and the rest supplied the proper colour of pro- 

175 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

priety. From his retreat in the Willard Hotel 
in Washington, Lamar was sending ecstatic 
telegrams, reporting progress, signing the name 
of David H. Lewis, and receiving in reply 
approving messages from Rintelen, who used 
Jones, Miller, and Muller as aliases. The con- 
vention seemed a great success. And its prepa- 
ration and operation had got the German's 
money. t Of the #547,000 that Rintelen brought, 
Lamar got more than $300,000. It looked so 
good to Rintelen that he was ready to get more — 
from Germany or from his limitless sources of 
credit here. 

But all was not well with Rintelen. He had 
other lines out besides Lamar's, and he caught 
some disquieting fish — some of which he did 
not identify until later. First, he was playing 
the social game not wisely but too well. He 
gave '-dinner parties; was a guests at others. 
He should have been more politic than he was. 
The Lusitania was sunk on May 7th. Instead of 
adopting the manner of a man deep enough in 
intrigue to know that he should speak of this 
crime as a lamentable blunder of his country's, 
he justified it. His words gave the gravest 
offense to his guests. He went further, and 
threw out hinted threats of other perils that 
would confront ships carrying munitions — hints 
that he himself had had a hand in the mysterious 

176 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

fires on ships that were almost a daily occurrence. 
Some dinner guests in New York took him 
seriously and reported him to the Government, 
which had been suspicious of him almost from 
the day of his arrival in this country. 
I Also, Rintelen undertook to get newspaper 
publicity favourable to an embargo on the ship- 
ment of munitions. He got himself introduced 
to "Jack" Hammond, an old newspaper man 
in New York, and closed with him a contract 
for syndicate articles in a chain of papers across 
the|country. He met Hammond as one Fred 
Hansen, a ship captain. (Hammond later testi- 
fied that Rintelen told him that he "killed" 
Hansen the day after the Lusitania was sunk.) 
After sizing Hammond up as worthy of trust, he 
re-introduced himself as E. V. Gibbons, a purchas- 
ing agent, with offices in the building occupied in 
part by the Transatlantic Trust Company. And 
at length he confided to Hammond his real im- 
portance in the scheme of things German. 

Early in this relationship Hammond be- 
came sure that this man was planning to violate 
the laws of the United States, and he reported 
the matter to the Department of Justice. The 
Department, already suspicious, asked Ham- 
mond to keep up his connection with Rin- 
telen, and through this means 'it learned a 
great deal about him. Not enough to cause 

177 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

his arrest — Rintelen never confided that much 
in any American but Lamar, who had his own 
reasons for silence. 

\ Out of Rintelen's multifarious activities arose 
many of the mysterious fires and explosions 
in munitions plants, the burning of ships at sea, 
the attempts on the Welland Canal in Canada, 
strikes in war industries, and the like. The 
discovery of Dr. Walter A. Scheele's part in the 
incendiary bombs matter, and his connection 
with Rintelen, began to make the ground fairly 
warm under Rintelen's feet. And the Govern- 
ment was taking an uncomfortable interest in 
Labour's National Peace Council. Rintelen be- 
came uneasy. 

| His fears were now fed from a new quarter. 
'Andrew D. Meloy became a confidant of his, 
and Meloy had his own axe to grind. Rin- 
telen had taken an interest in the German 
activities in Mexico, and almost from the day 
of his arrival had been intimate in this work 
with Federico Stallforth, a German banker of 
Mexico City who joined Rintelen in New York. 
Stallforth had offices with Meloy at 55 Liberty 
Street, and when the Transatlantic Trust Com- 
pany became embarrassed by Rintelen's pres- 
ence, Stallforth persuaded Meloy to rent Rin- 
telen desk room. Their acquaintance started 
there, about July 1st. 

178 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

Meloy was a well-known engineer and pro- 
moter. He had exploited concessions in Mexico 
— railroad rights of way and gold mines — and 
in his home state of New Jersey had floated 
some real-estate "developments." Meloy saw 
in Rintelen exactly what Lamar had seen — 
a lot of real money and an eagerness too great 
for caution. He began to belittle Lamar's 
scheme. Labour's National Peace Council would 
never do. It looked good on paper, but it 
would never stop the shipment of munitions. 
He even hinted that Lamar had been "playing" 
Rintelen. Now, if Rintelen wanted a real 
scheme, certain to succeed, he knew the very 
thing. Direct action — stop the bluffing and 
the dangerous intrigues. Buy the whole mu- 
nitions output of the country. Bid high enough 
to get it, pay for it outright, and store it. That 
would cost money, lots of it: but what was 
money in comparison with the certainty of 
German victory which this plan would insure? 

Rintelen was dazzled. Here was the authen- 
tic voice of American big business speaking. 
A magnificent scheme. He would take it to 
Germany, take Meloy with him,; and get his 
Government to O. K. it. 

But how get back to Germany? . He had grave 
doubts about the Gasche passport being good 
again. He put the question to Meloy, and 

179 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Meloy advised against it. There was a better 
way: get a new passport under a new name. So 
for a few days Rintelen became "Edward V. 
Gates, wine merchant, of Millersburg, Pa." 
In this guise Meloy introduced him to one of 
his own real-estate salesmen, and Rintelen took 
this man to dinner once or twice to work up the 
illusion. Then, one day, he asked the salesman 
to go with him to the passport bureau in New 
York and be his witness to an application for a 
passport. The salesman went, and in good 
faith swore that Rintelen was Edward V. Gates. 
His faith was not so good when he swore he 
had known him for three years. The appli- 
cation was transmitted telegraphically to Wash- 
ington. Much to Rintelen's astonishment and 
alarm, it was denied. 

Meanwhile, Meloy had been working on a 
devious scheme to protect himself in his mis- 
sion to Berlin. He must be cloaked in emi- 
nent respectability on this errand, for it would 
be an unpopular one with the British if they 
knew its real purpose, and he must hide that. 
First of all, he would take his wife, who did not 
know what his mission was. She had taken an 
active interest before the war in the peace move- 
ments centring at The Hague, and nothing was 
more natural than that she should wish now, 
during the war, to renew her friendships in Hol- 

180 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

land with an eye to furthering a cause now more 
than ever vital to the world. 

But Meloy was not content with only one 
companion. He must have others who would 
expand the picture of innocence abroad. One 
of his neighbours in the suburb on the Jersey 
Coast where he made his country home was a 
wealthy woman known widely in America for 
her interest both in the peace and suffrage 
movements. Meloy telephoned to her and 
asked her to see him at his home. This lady 
drove over one summer evening in her motor 
car, accompanied by two women friends. The 
friends sat in the open car while she sat on the 
porch talking to Meloy. Meloy is very deaf; 
the lady had to talk loudly to make him hear. 
Meloy differed from most deaf people, who 
usually speak in a lower tone than those who 
hear well — he went rather to the other extreme, 
and spoke louder than most folks do. The 
women in the car heard the conversation, and 
they heard it a second time when their friend 
repeated it to them on the way home. And the 
Government heard it also, from the lips of all 
three. 

The burden of the conversation was this: 
Meloy was taking his wife to Europe for a vaca- 
tion; they were going to Holland, where so many 
forward-looking movements for the good of 

igi 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

mankind made their international headquarters; 
he would be drawn aside a great deal by busi- 
ness affairs and Mrs. Meloy would be lone- 
some; he was anxious to provide companionship 
for her, if the lady would accompany them, he 
would pay all her expenses, he would assure her 
that her journey would be made de luxe, he 
would (he put it more delicately) even add a 
money consideration, he would see that the 
journey included a visit to war-bound Germany, 
now so difficult of access, that in Germany she 
should have entree to social circles so exclusive 
that they were inaccessible even to the American 
Ambassador, and that, to crown all, she should 
be presented to the Kaiser. 

The lady said she would think it over. It 
was an attractive invitation, but she did not 
just like it — perhaps it was too attractive. She 
talked it over with her friends: they advised 
against it. She telephoned Meloy next day and 
declined. 

Meloy repeated the invitation to several 
women. All declined. Then, as the Noordam 
was to sail on August 3d, and he had no more 
time, he decided to take his secretary, a Miss 
Brophy. 

Rintelen was now thoroughly alarmed. The 
Government's refusal to grant his fraudulent 
application for a passport indicated that it 

182 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

knew about him. The Government was get- 
ting "warm" in its investigation of the incen- 
diary bombs. The Government was taking an 
unpleasant interest in Labour's National Peace 
Council. Rintelen felt irresistibly the pangs of 
Heimzueh, the longing for home. He must go, at 
any risk. He would chance it as Gasche again. 

So he sailed on the Noordam, with Meloy 
and party. He bore with him Lamar's urgent 
appeals for more funds for Labour's National 
Peace Council, now at the high tide of its 
success. And he was in the hands of Meloy, 
who was at the first of his own rainbow of hope 
of millions with which to buy America's munition 
output — on commission. 

At Falmouth the Noordam was detained for 
fourteen hours. The British took a great 
interest in the Gasche-Meloy party. Gasche's 
baggage revealed nothing suspicious, but Gasche 
was removed to a long residence in an intern- 
ment camp near London. Meloy was detained 
for several days. Mrs. Meloy soon appeared 
to be beyond suspicion. Miss Brophy de- 
clared that her baggage contained only personal 
effects. But at the bottom of her last trunk 
was found a wallet containing Gasche's papers. 
These were seized, and Miss Brophy and Mrs. 
Meloy were allowed to proceed to Holland, 
where they were later rejoined by Meloy. 

183 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

The Gasche papers were most interesting. 
They contained some of Rintelen's letters show- 
ing his intimacy with well-known New Yorkers, 
and letters in which he referred to his "official 
mission" to the United States that were very 
important, for they proved what Rintelen 
steadfastly denied, namely, that he was in this 
country by orders of the German Government. 
In one of them to a man in Germany, whom 
he addressed as "Most Honourable Counsellor/' 
he wrote: "Your letter of the 25th March 
[191 5] was sent after me when I was on an 
official journey, and I request you to excuse 
the delaying in replying." And another letter, 
from the National Bank Fuer Deutschland, 
dated Berlin, 25th May, 1915, and addressed 
"To the Landed Proprietor, Von Preskow," 
contained this sentence: "Director Rintelen, 
who looked after Major Von Katte's account, 
entered the navy on the outbreak of hostilities, 
and as he is at present on an official journey is 
not available at the moment." 

With Rintelen's internment ended Lamar's 
golden fortune and Meloy's golden vision and 
Rintelen's dream of destruction. And now 
began one of the most difficult and one of the 
longest tasks of the Department of Justice. 
For, out of the fragments of evidence at its 
command, and out of the seemingly innocent 

184 




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RINTELEN AND HIS CONFEDERATES 
Above, Rintelen's photograph on a false passoort with which he tried to escape 
from the United States; left, Andrew D. Meloy; right, David Lamar, "the 
Wolf of Wall Street" 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

public acts of Labour's National Peace Council, 
and out of the obscure and isolated outrages 
to ships and factories in the United States, 
the Department of Justice had to construct a 
pattern that should prove, by tangible legal 
evidence, the guilt of Rintelen and Lamar in 
a plot to violate the laws of the United States. 

This long investigation was a fascinating 
study in human nature. If only Lamar had 
been a little different in his manners, he might 
have escaped the clutches of the law. If Rin- 
telen had been as wise as he was clever, he 
might still be in an internment camp instead 
of a prison. 

Lamar, it may be recalled, had a weakness 
for automobiles. He hired them on all occasions. 
They were especially useful to him for con- 
ferences with Rintelen. They did not wish to 
be seen together, so Lamar would drive to an 
unfrequented spot in Central Park. Rintelen 
would drive up in another car and get into 
Lamar's, and then they would go for a long ride 
while they discussed their plans. Sometimes 
they would go for hours on the North Shore 
of Long Island; sometimes for long excursions 
in the Pelham region of Westchester County, 
stopping perhaps at a wayside inn and taking 
a room for greater privacy in their conferences. 

An agent of the Department of Justice spent 

i85 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

six weeks making the rounds of the garages 
in New York. He carried Lamar's picture in 
his pocket. He showed it to every chauffeur 
in every garage. And every chauffeur who had 
driven a car for Lamar during that summer of 
1915 recognized the picture, and every one of 
them applied the same epithet to its original 
that Trampas applied to the Virginian in Owen 
Wister's book when the Virginian, in response, 
drew his gun and demanded that "when you 
call me that, smile!" For Lamar, who was the 
suave, the gracious, the ultra-polite and charm- 
ing man to people whom he wished to cajole, 
was overbearing, fault-finding, and peremptory 
toward those who served him. His movements 
in the hotels about the country were several 
times traced by a rough description completed 
by a remark about his manner toward servants. 
No waiter or bell-boy ever forgot him. He was 
forever "kicking about the service." 

This vivid impression that he made on the 
chauffeurs contributed greatly to his undoing. 
They remembered him perfectly, and recalled 
his companions. They recognized Rintelen's 
photograph. And several of them had over- 
heard parts of the conversations that were 
useful to the Government. Through these 
men, Lamar's connection with Rintelen in a 
conspiracy to violate the Sherman Act by 

186 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

restraining our foreign trade in munitions was 
established. 

One's laundry, too, may be a dangerous 
thing. Lamar denied that he had stopped 
at hotels in Chicago and Indianapolis and 
elsewhere at the same time that Martin and 
others were there. But handwriting experts 
proved that the names "David Lenaur," "David 
Lewis," and the like, on hotel registers on those 
days were in Lamar's handwriting. And the 
conclusive proof of their evidence was that the 
laundry lists of the hotels on those days showed 
that the laundry mark on the linen of "Lenaur" 
and of "Lewis" was the laundry mark of Lamar. 

Charge accounts at stores may also prove 
troublesome. It became necessary to find out 
where Lamar banked his money. That was dis- 
covered through Lamar's stomach trouble. He 
was a patron of a druggist in New York who had 
his pet prescription for his pet ailment. Lamar 
sometimes wrote, and sometimes telegraphed, 
for another bottle of this medicine. A telegram 
of this kind sent the Government agent to the 
druggist. Did Lamar ever pay by check? 
On what banks? The answers led to those 
banks and thence to others and thence to 
Lamar's brokers, from one of whom alone evi- 
dence was obtained that the whilom bankrupt 
had lost, in one series of speculations that sum- 

187 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

mer, #38,000 in cash. Whose cash? The Gov- 
ernment was able to prove that Lamar had got 
thousands of dollars from Rintelen, because 
they produced the men who saw Rintelen pay 
it, and Lamar was not able to prove that he 
had got any such sums from anybody else, 
so the jury took the Government's theory as 
fact that Lamar was Rintelen's man. 

The story of this proof is worth telling. On 
the witness stand at the trial, George Plockman, 
the treasurer of the Transatlantic Trust Com- 
pany (the Austrian bank in New York with 
which Rintelen kept his funds) described the 
arrangement Rintelen had made to conceal 
the passage of money for illegal acts. He had 
instructed the Transatlantic Trust Company, 
when it received checks drawn by him in a 
certain form, to cash them without questioning 
the identity of the bearer and without requiring 
him to endorse them. 

One check of this kind was presented at the 
bank one day, and the paying teller brought it 
to Plockman to ask if he should pay it. 

"Who presented it ?" asked Plockman. 

"That dark man over there," replied the 
paying teller. 

"I thought/' said Plockman on the witness 
stand, "that this man was a Mexican, but while I 
was looking at him our vice-president came up 

188' . 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

and when he understood the situation and saw 
the man he said : *Mein Gott ! Dot is de Volf of 
Vail Street! I hope Rintelen has not got into 
his clutches !'" 

One other incident of the trial should be told." 
Testimony was brought in that showed how 
the money for the Peace Council was spent. 
One item was for funds to pay the expenses of a 
German preacher from St. Louis to attend the 
convention at Washington and open the pro- 
ceedings with prayer. Lamar had never heard 
of this until he heard it in the courtroom. It 
was too much for him. When this evidence 
came out, of the lengths to which his own pupils 
had out-distanced even their teacher in the art 
of political camouflage, he burst into roars of 
uncontrollable laughter which literally stopped 
all proceedings in court, the tears rolling down 
his cheeks as he struggled to subdue his mirth. 

Out of all the investigations of the Govern- 
ment arose a card index of every man that Rinte- 
len and Lamar had seen during the four months 
from April 3 to August 3, 191 5, of every hotel 
they had visited, of practically every telephone 
call they had made and every telegram sent or 
received, of nearly every dollar they had had and 
spent. Thousands upon thousands of these cards 
were made and filed. They convicted both men. 

The Government indicted Rintelen, Lamar, 
189 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Buchanan, Fowler, Martin, Schulteis, and a 
man named Monnett, for conspiracy to violate 
the Sherman Act in the operations of Labour's 
National Peace Council to restrain our foreign 
trade. Rintelen, Lamar, and Martin were con- 
victed. The rest got the benefit of a very slim 
doubt, except Frank B. Monnett, the farmer 
attorney-general of Ohio, whose reputation in 
the early suit of Ohio to oust the Standard 
Oil Company from the state had been used as 
" stage setting" by Martin. He was freed by 
the Court before the jury was sent out to de- 
liberate. The convicted men got the limit of 
the law — one year in jail. Rintelen was like- 
wise indicted for perjury in his application for 
a passport as Edward V. Gates, and again for 
another crime against our laws. He was con- 
victed on both charges, and sentenced to several 
months' imprisonment on each. 

No one realized better than the judges who 
sentenced him how inadequate these punish- 
ments to expiate his crimes. But the laws 
under which Rintelen was convicted — and they 
were the only laws under which his acts (all 
committed before our entry into the war) could 
be questioned — were enacted in times of peace, 
when no one dreamed of the world conflict or 
could have imagined how it would affect us 
when it came. 

190 



THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 

Rintelen has completed serving time on the 
first of his three sentences, and has the other 
two still to serve. The Tiger of Berlin is 
securely caged, and not likely soon to be again 
at large. 



191 



CHAPTER IX 
The American Protective League 

ON GOING to war with the great masters 
of spy craft last year, the United States 
had only a handful of secret service men to 
guard its internal frontier. Within our borders 
were a million and a half men and youths who 
were enemy aliens. Not all of them hostile, it 
is true; but all potentially dangerous because 
great national organizations existed — even shoot- 
ing societies — through which German influences 
might reach in a few hours or days. And in 
every centre of population there were captains 
and field marshals of German intrigue, supplied 
with unlimited money, to appeal to their feelings 
and to lead them should a chance come to 
strike. 

Yet America, during the first year of war, 
has been singularly peaceful. No serious dis- 
turbance has hampered war preparations con- 
ducted on a gigantic scale. Even the Selective 
Service Act, inconsistent with all our volunteer 
traditions and pride, was accepted almost with- 
out opposition. Instead of a red reign of con- 

192 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

flagration and civil strife, there have been no 
outbreaks worthy of the name; and, according 
to the Underwriters' Association, not a single 
fire in our munitions plants of a clearly estab- 
lished incendiary character. 

Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory, in 
fact, had solid grounds for declaring to the 
executive committee of the American Bar Asso- 
ciation recently: "I do not believe that there is 
to-day any country which is being more capably 
policed than is the United States/' He added 
that for every man engaged in detecting and in- 
vestigating violations of federal laws in April, 
1917, there are at least one thousand to-day; while 
reports on new cases are coming in at the rate 
of fifteen hundred a day! 

That sounds like a miracle of organization, 
doesn't it? Even the army, with its pride- 
compelling record of expansion, is a slow coach 
beside these legions of "plain-clothes" soldiers 
who hold our inner lines. Let's see how it 
happened. 

When the war broke, the only secret service 
work done by the Government was handled 
by five small organizations. The Department 
of Justice had its Bureau of Investigation, 
charged with the discovery of offenses against 
the federal statutes — not a large force, but 
quite adequate to its peace-time job. The 

193 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Treasury Department maintained a secret ser- 
vice with two definite functions — to protect the 
President's life and person, and to prevent 
counterfeiting. The Army and Navy had each 
a few officers detailed to its intelligence service 
—the gathering of military and naval informa- 
tion and the protection of our own plans and 
operations. And finally the State Department 
possessed a small intelligence section of its own. 
But by comparison with the territory to be 
covered and the number of active German and 
Austrian agents in the country, there were few 
experienced men available for counter-espionage. 
And there in the background were that million 
and a half enemy aliens who would bear a lot 
of watching. 

The declaration of war, then, instantly brought 
an emergency. Part of it the Department of 
Justice met by striking swift and hard at all 
who were unquestionably enemy agents. Be- 
cause of their propaganda and other activities 
against the Entente Allies, these agents had 
been under observation for some time. Within 
forty-eight hours the more dangerous had been 
rounded up — under the hoary old act of 1798, 
which gave the President power to intern enemy 
aliens when their being at liberty might con- 
stitute a menace to the public safety. 

There remained the urgent need of an immense 
194 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

increase in the Government's counter-espionage 
forces. It would take thousands of trained and 
intelligent operatives to keep watch of the 
German agents and German sympathizers who 
swarmed throughout the country. As a class, 
such operatives did not exist: to draft the right 
kind of raw material from civil life would in- 
volve delays, great personal sacrifices on the 
part of the men drafted, and an enormous yearly 
budget. Thousands of business and profes- 
sional careers would be interrupted at critical 
stages. Most of the men who accepted the call 
would be risking after-the-war failure in their 
chosen callings. The work simply couldn't be 
done that way. 

Then it was that the American Protective 
League found a way to do it. 

The League is a volunteer body of 250,000 
patriotic Americans, organized with the ap- 
proval and operating under the direction of the 
Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. 
It cross-cuts every commercial, industrial, pro- 
fessional, social, and economic level in American 
life. Bank presidents and bell hops, judges 
and janitors, managers and mechanics — all ranks 
meet on its common platform of loyalty and 
service. It has woven a net of discreet surveil- 
lance across more than a thousand American 
cities and towns; and the meshes are so small 

195 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

that few active German agents slip through. 
It reaches out into the country as well. More 
than 52,000,000 people — about half the popula- 
tion of the United States — live in communities 
where the League has active and effective organ- 
izations; where too, propaganda, or sedition, 
sabotage or plain slacking are neither popular 
nor healthy. 

The League was born in March, last year, 
two weeks before we declared war. The idea 
originated with Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago. 
Mr. Briggs is now Chairman of the National 
Board of Directors of the American Protective 
League. He secured authority to establish it 
as a volunteer auxiliary of the Department of 
Justice on March 22, 1917. Within a month 
he had the League in operation with several 
thousand members. With him, Captain Charles 
Daniel Frey and Mr. Victor Elting were re- 
sponsible for its development and the organiza- 
tion of the work. Mr. Frey is organizer and 
First Chief of the Chicago District, the original 
working unit of the American Protective League. 
The plan, the policies, and the methods de- 
veloped in the Chicago District, which includes 
280 cities and towns, were approved by the 
Department of Justice, and have been generally 
followed throughout the country as the model 
and standard for subsequent organizations. Mr. 

196 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

Elting, as Assistant Chief at Chicago, has from 
the inception of the League been active in the 
development of its policy. These three, now 
national directors with headquarters at Wash- 
ington, are modest about taking any credit for 
the amazing extension of the League and its 
extraordinary present usefulness. They insist 
that the first great response was due to the 
general recognition of a national crisis, the 
impulse to do something to meet it, and the 
patriotic and unselfish cooperation of every local 
chief and individual operative in the country. 
At all events, it was knowledge of how wide- 
spread and unscrupulous was the German spy 
system, and how seriously it was affecting the 
temper and loyalty of aliens and naturalized 
citizens, that launched the League. Proposal 
was made to the Department of Justice that a 
volunteer auxiliary of simon-pure Americans be 
formed to keep watch for the Government in 
every neighbourhood and to make most of the 
Department's investigations for it. The service 
would be without pay. No inquiries would be 
undertaken without reference of the case to the 
Department first. And no expense accounts 
would be presented for money spent. Doubts 
may have existed regarding the feasibility of 
the plan. Such men as were needed would be 
hard to interest in the drudgery of police in- 

197 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

vestigation. But Mr. Briggs was confident that 
there were thousands of business and profes- 
sional men past service age and necessary to 
their families and communities who still were 
fired with patriotism and filled with wrath 
at the progress of German propaganda and 
plotting in this country. They were success- 
ful men of affairs — men of proved judgment, 
intelligence, initiative, and energy. The De- 
partment could not buy their full time at any 
price, but it could command their spare time, 
plus as many work-hours, on occasions, as were 
necessary to complete any task. There were 
also men of service age, eager to fight but held 
at home by obligations or other causes, who 
would not stint either time or energy in the 
League's service. 

Given authority to go ahead March 22, 1917, 
the League was organized on military lines. 
The plan was that each city and its tributary 
country should be broken up into divisions, in 
charge of inspectors. Divisions were cut up 
into districts, with captains in command. And 
each captain recruited as many working squads, 
under lieutenants, as the size and character of 
his district demanded. Reinforcing this terri- 
torial organization was another which treated 
every important industry, trade, and profes- 
sion, and even large business establishments 

198 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

and office buildings as individual organization 
units. The territorial organization was known 
as the Bureau of Investigation; the classified 
trade, professional, and industrial force as the 
Bureau of Information. As a matter of fact, 
they were just the right and left arms of the 
League. Each had its specialized work to do, 
but the big jobs in each case were the same. 

From the start, the two main functions of 
the League stood out boldly. The first was 
"to make prompt and reliable report of all dis- 
loyal or enemy activities and of all infractions 
or evasions of the war code of the United States." 
The second followed naturally: "to make prompt 
and thorough investigation of all matters of 
similar nature referred to it by the Department 
of Justice. " Close cooperation with the local 
agent of the Department was essential in both 
instances. 

Because the plan had been carefully worked 
out, the League made a flying start in a great 
Western city. Inspectors, captains, lieutenants 
were commissioned and assigned to their units. 
"Operatives," picked with equal caution, were 
sworn in and given their credentials. By May 
first, there were a thousand men engaged in 
the absorbing new game. 

Thousands of investigations taxed the young 
ardour and endurance of the League — suspected 

199 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

spy activities, seditious speeches, lying reports 
about the Red Cross, Y. M. G. A., and Knights 
of Columbus, pro-German propaganda, sus- 
pected treasonable conspiracies, sabotage cases 
and, later, organized and individual efforts to 
evade the draft. But every member was under 
pledge to run down to the end any case assigned 
to him, whether it took a day or a week, and 
results came speedily. 

Though lacking in experience, most of the 
members had unusual 'equipment as investiga- 
tors. Nearly all had imagination and logical, 
work-trained minds. Many of them were men 
of means and could devote all of their time to 
urgent cases. Instead of waiting for an 0. K. 
on a requisition for a motor car, they had ma- 
chines of their own to use. Without consider- 
ing how an item would strike a government 
auditor, they could and did spend their own 
money to get the facts they sought. Without 
having to finesse approaches to necessary sources 
of information, they could usually draw on a 
wide circle of friends for inside facts which a 
professional detective might require days to 
secure. 

The League's rule in assigning cases, indeed, 
is to choose as investigator the man whose 
social, professional, or business connections are 
such that he can "clean up" with the least 

200 




Officers of the American Protective League, an organization of 250,000 
patriotic American business men who cooperate effectively with the Depart- 
ment of Justice in its operations against spies, slackers, and seditionists. 
Above, Mr. A. M. Briggs, founder; left, Capt. Daniel Frey, and right, Mr. 
Victor Eltino. National Directors 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

effort and in the shortest space of time. When 
there are many places to visit, the case goes to 
a man owning a motor car. If it is complex in 
character, with lines extending into various 
industries, clubs, trades, and so on, the work 
may be divided and several members assigned 
to it. The main idea is to get the work done, 
and done quickly— the secondary purpose to 
make it as easy as may be for the members. 

League members knew little about methods 
of investigation. But they had that priceless 
gift, intelligence, and they learned by doing. 
There was such a mass of complaints, tips, 
and wild guesses concerning enemy activities 
waiting to be handled, that no extensive school- 
ing could be attempted. The cleverest govern- 
ment operatives available and experienced city 
and private detectives talked to groups of 
captains and lieutenants, and these passed 
along the information to their men. A. Bruce 
Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigation, 
Department of Justice, was quick to recognize 
the possibilities of the League. Everywhere his 
organization gave invaluable aid and coopera- 
tion in training League members. 

Able lawyers made brief but comprehensive 
digests of the laws involved and 'the rules of 
evidence to be observed. Methods of work 
and problems of authority and conduct were 

20 1 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

explained at length in a handbook. Supple- 
menting the handbook and the law digest, 
bulletins were published at intervals to suggest 
better methods, to report fresh evidence of Ger- 
man plans and propaganda, or to sum up and 
interpret the new laws which Congress was 
enacting for the punishment of espionage and 
sedition. 

Close touch was kept at every step with the 
Department of Justice. Forms for reports and 
records were adopted, conforming to the system 
in use by the Department. Carbons of all re- 
ports and records were made for the files of 
the Bureau of Investigation. Eventually a com- 
plete record of each case found its way to the 
master file in Washington. In this way dupli- 
cation of effort was avoided, complete coopera- 
tion assured, and the exact status of any inquiry 
could be learned in a moment by any one 
needing the information. 

Far from running wild in its enthusiasm to 
corral all enemy agents, the League tried to 
give every alien it investigated an American 
square deal. Perhaps the finest paragraph in 
the handbook is this one urging the right of 
aliens to considerate treatment until their uu- 
friendly attitude is revealed: 

"Many aliens resident in this country are 
absolutely loyal to its institutions and its laws, 

202 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

and many individuals having the legal status 
of alien enemies are not only conducting them- 
selves with due respect to our laws, but are of 
great value in industry and business. Great 
care must be exercised by members to avoid 
unnecessary alarm to aliens and to avoid causing 
apprehension upon their part as to the fairness 
and justice of the attitude of the Government 
toward them. In this regard members will be 
called upon for the exercise of judgment and 
discretion of a high order. They should protect 
citizens and aliens from unjust suspicion, but 
must fearlessly ascertain and report treason 
and disloyalty wherever found." 

All this has to do with the investigation of 
specific cases after they have been brought to 
the League's attention by the report of a mem- 
ber, an outside complaint, or a request from the 
Department of Justice for an inquiry into the 
facts. Quite as important in discouraging dis- 
loyalty or pro-German activities is the service 
of League members as eyes and ears for the 
Government in detecting and making first re- 
ports on offenses or intended offenses against 
the war code of the United States. 

This means that every League member is 
always on the lookout for any word or act that 
smacks of sedition or espionage. It is here 
that the classified organization by industries, 

203 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

trades, professions, and individual business es- 
tablishments develops its full value. When a 
factory making munitions, clothing, motor trucks, 
or any other war necessity has been organized 
as a League unit, the members are on the 
alert for signs of disturbance. They can quickly 
report to their supervisor what they have seen 
or heard, and, after comparing notes, can take 
precautions against the threatened trouble. If 
they need outside help in checking up a suspect 
after working hours, the territorial organization 
is ready to cooperate. The suspect need never 
know that he is under suspicion until his guilt 
or innocence is pretty well established. 

Such a factory unit is typical of the League 
organization in the larger cities. Besides the 
strictly industrial group, there are usually 
eight broad divisions, any one of which may be 
important enough to have an assistant bureau 
chief, and several captains, lieutenants, and in- 
dividual units. These divisions take in the real 
estate, financial, insurance, and professional 
groups, the ' hotels, transportation companies, 
public utilities, and merchandising interests — 
wholesale, retail, and mail-order. And the in- 
dustries alone may be numerous and powerful 
enough to call for separate divisions — munitions, 
packers' products, food stuffs, war equipment, 
metal trades, lumber, motor cars, electrical 

204 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

machinery and supplies, chemicals and paints, 
and so on. It all depends on how numerous 
and how large are the establishments in each 
line. Outside the larger cities territorial organi- 
zation is the rule. When the district is identified 
with some industry of special value in war, 
like mining, lumbering, or cattle raising, protec- 
tion of that industry may be the chief function 
of the League. 

Not only does the classified method of or- 
ganization help each trade and profession to 
police itself; it greatly facilitates important 
inquiries. For example, suppose that the Gov- 
ernment wants to find and learn the local errand 
of a visiting electrical engineer with a German 
name and considerable cash whom it has had 
under surveillance elsewhere. On being asked 
for a report, the League's local Chief assigns the 
case to one of his deputies. The latter notifies 
the supervisors of the various hotel units to 
watch out for the stranger, report his arrival, 
and keep watch of his letters and telephone 
calls. He also communicates with the head of 
the professional division and asks that an 
electrical engineer be detailed on the case. 

When the suspect has been located and the 
hotel supervisor has transmitted any other in- 
formation he has been able to get, the engineer 
member begins work. Going to the hotel he 

205 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

finds or makes a way to become acquainted with 
the stranger, offers him the usual professional 
courtesies, and gives him a chance to suggest 
why he is in town or whom he wants to see. 
Direct questions are not asked, of course, since 
they would put the stranger on his guard. After 
he has carried the inquiry as far as he can, the 
engineer member quietly and casually goes his 
way, unless the stranger has accepted his offers 
of help or hospitality. 

If the suspect has "covered up" more than 
an honest engineer should, he is systematically 
shadowed by other League operatives during 
the remainder of his stay. Walking out or 
staying in his room, travelling in taxicabs or in 
street cars, making business calls or social calls, 
one or more of his two "shadows" would 
probably keep him in sight and make memo- 
randa regarding every person he met and spoke 
with and every significant circumstance that 
took place. Only when in a private house or 
in his hotel room would he escape observation 
— and even then a fairly close tab would be 
kept on what he was doing. 

A record would be made of every telephone 
call, every telegram, every letter received, with 
particular reference to the postmark, dates, 
and the return cards on the envelopes. His 
baggage would be inventoried and described, 

206 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

even to its hotel labels, its character, and its 
probable price and origin. When he finally 
departed, if the porter bought his tickets for him 
or whether he purchased them himself at the 
station, his route, and his first destination — 
all would be matters of history. One of his 
"shadows" would even see him safely past the 
last suburban stop from which he might double 
back to the city or to a waiting confederate. 

This seems a mighty pother to make about 
an apparently innocent traveller. But the 
League prefers to work overtime and play safe. 
The narratives of some of the "tailings" would 
make marvellous reading if they only led up to 
the proper dramatic climax. Many of them 
do — but those are not to be talked about yet 
awhile. And the others are significant only be- 
cause they are the records of uninteresting tasks 
as faithfully executed as though the sheltering 
doorway or hotel lobby chair were a listening 
post in France. 

Remember that these tasks were made both 
complex and difficult by the lack of laws de- 
fining espionage, disloyalty, and sedition as 
punishable crimes. That ancient act of 1798 
could be invoked for the internment of danger- 
ous enemy aliens. But an American citizen, 
native or naturalized, could spit treason and 
plot trouble unchecked so long as he did not 

207 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

run foul of the civil or the criminal code. That 
is all changed now; the amended Espionage and 
Sedition Law, signed by the President in June, 
1 91 7, is so broad and has such a fine set of ser- 
viceable teeth that no disloyal citizen or un- 
friendly alien can escape the penalty if his guilt 
can be proved. 

For more than a year, however, the League 
was compelled not only to prove a citizen's 
pro-German activities; it had also to find a way 
to punish them, or at least to discourage them. 
Every inquiry into such a case, therefore, had 
to be supplemented by an effort to find evidence 
of an offense against the civil or criminal statutes. 
And where this failed, a good old-fasnioned 
"talking to" often had the desired effect. 

Hatred of "Prussian militarism" and pre- 
tended allegiance to the United States were the 
favourite pose of many propagandists whom the 
League rounded up and secured billets for in 
various internment camps. Most of these had 
taken out their first naturalization papers; 
except in a few middle and western states like 
Nebraska, where "first papers" and six months 
of residence confer the right to vote, this was 
no protection when evidence of disloyalty or pro- 
German activity was adduced against them. 

Typical of this class was the case of an Aus- 
trian officer of reserves who was six months 

208 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

under investigation before he was arrested. 
Like so many other interned Teutons, his entry 
into the United States had been by way of the 
Argentine. Traced back, it was discovered that 
he had reported to the Austrian Consul in 
Buenos Aires as an officer of reserves at the 
first mobilization call, July 27, 1914; and again 
when he sailed for the United States with a 
false Swedish passport in 191 5. Then, in suc- 
cession, he had registered at the San Francisco, 
St. Louis, and Chicago consulates — at the last 
on September 30, 1915. 

In less than six months, however, he had 
applied for naturalization papers and was ar- 
ranging to return to Buenos Aires as selling 
agent for several American houses. When the 
State Department denied him a passport, he 
devised another means of keeping watch of 
American efforts to supplant German houses 
in the South American markets. This was an 
export information bureau, but his information 
was not live enough to hold his clients long. 
Next he projected a $2,000,000 corporation to 
take over and operate the German interned 
steamships at New York. By turns also he 
was advertising solicitor and automobile sales- 
man. 

The occupation he followed always allowed 
him maximum freedom in moving about and a 

209 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

plausible excuse for approaching almost any- 
one he wanted to reach. Very early in the 
inquiry, his defenselessness appeared; he had 
entered the country under a false passport and 
could be arrested whenever the Department of 
Justice chose to move. Because he had arrived 
in San Francisco eighteen months before our 
declaration of war, he was given the benefit 
of the doubt. Not until his character as a 
dangerous enemy alien had been established was 
he interned. He will be deported at the end 
of the war. 

Different in detail, but similar in character 
and outcome, was the Odyssey of a missionary 
of German culture, whose earnings were as 
nominal as his expenditures were excessive. 
Arriving in New York in 19 12, also by way of 
the Argentine, he had spent the intervening 
time travelling about the country^ in various 
roles which would bring him in contact with 
rich Americans of German birth or blood. At 
various times he was a dealer in pictures, in 
stocks and bonds, and in subscription editions 
of the German classics. 

As a side line, he seems to have been check- 
ing up American efforts to develop sources of 
potash, Germany's one great monopoly in min- 
erals. He even engaged himself as stock sales- 
man for an Eastern company organized to 

210 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

extract potash from the Pacific kelp fields and 
made at least one trip to the coast to study that 
new industry. Always his scale of living was 
far in excess of his earnings from such sources 
of income as could be traced. After a long and 
patient inquiry — covering nearly eight months 
from the time the man's pro-German utterances 
were first reported — he was finally interned for 
the duration of the war. 

Enemy aliens have not been alone in keeping 
League members up at night. Far more numer- 
ous have been the investigations bearing upon 
the character and loyalty of American citizens, 
particularly candidates for commissions in the 
Army and Navy and applicants for civilian 
service in positions of trust. Still a third class 
of inquiries which have lacked the thrill of 
espionage cases have been the thousands of 
investigations made of claims for exemption or 
deferred classification under the selective service 
law. 

Anything like a divided allegiance, of course, 
would destroy the usefulness of an army or 
naval officer — if, indeed, it did not make him 
a positive menace to his country. Every char- 
acter and loyalty inquiry, therefore, has this 
background of danger, especially when the sub- 
ject is of German or of Austrian ancestry. And 
sometimes the League operative must have a 

211 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

keen scent for significant minor details to detect 
the danger signal. 

For instance, one of the candidates for a 
recent special officers' training camp was a 
young Cincinnati man with a German name. 
He was a citizen, of draft age, of such intelli- 
gence, experience, and physique that his ac- 
ceptance was a foregone conclusion if his loyalty 
were assured. Investigation showed him to have 
been pro-German in his sympathies before our 
declaration of war, and practically silent 
on war subjects since. His attitude was correct; 
and his application for training was a positive 
count in his favour. But the League investigator, 
digging around for information, learned that his 
man had been a contributor to a fund raised 
by a Gaelic newspaper for the defence of Sir 
Roger Casement, when that famous Irish rebel 
was on trial in London. 

If the man had been of Irish blood, such a con- 
tribution would have had little significance; 
natural sympathy for a compatriot in trouble 
might have prompted it. Such an act by a 
German or an American, however, suggested 
more than a passing interest in the violent pro- 
German, anti-English propaganda which this 
particular weekly exploited. Verifying the story 
by reference to the files of the newspaper, the 
investigator called attention to the fact in his 

212 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

report, and gave it as his opinion that the candi- 
date wanted a commission to escape the draft 
and that he lacked the whole-hearted loyalty and 
enthusiasm an Army officer must have to be suc- 
cessful. And, as the final decision coincided with 
the investigator's, the application was refused. 

Another incident — double-barrelled in its effect 
— has also its humorous side. One of the 
Chicago League officials picked up two deserters 
on Michigan Avenue early one evening last 
December. Neither had an overcoat, one had 
evidently " hocked " his blouse to provide food 
or drink. The League man knew he must 
turn them over to the police, but the boys 
were so cold and wretched that he determined 
to give them a good dinner before surrendering 
them. 

At his club, his "guests" created a certain 
amount of stir — and seemed to enjoy it. They 
"didn't miss a station from soup to cigarettes," 
as one of them expressed it. They were finishing 
up when a young man in a captain's uniform 
came over and interjected himself into the feast. 

"Excuse me," he began as the host arose, 
"may I ask what your interest in these men is ?" 

His tone was a shade too crisp, even for so 
young a captain. 

"May I ask yours?" the League man count- 
ered. 

213 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

"I'm in command of the provost guard in 
Chicago," the other declared. "It's my busi- 
ness to look after deserters." 

It was a fatal bit of brag. The League man 
knew the provost marshal — knew this fellow 
was an imposter. But one job at a time. 

"I know these chaps and Fm looking after 
them," he answered. "Come along, boys." 
And they departed in the olive splendour of a 
taxicab. Then it pulled up a little later before 
a red light, and a policeman opened the door. 
The lads were crestfallen but game. 

"It was bully while it lasted," they declared. 
"Anyway, they'd have got us sooner or later." 

Before noon next day the youthful pseudo- 
captain was wiping his tears away and explain- 
ing why he had been impersonating an officer. 
There was a group of musical comedy girls in 
the foreground and a trail of forged checks and 
unpaid club and hotel bills in the background. 
He is learning in Leavenworth prison, now, that 
the lion's skin is dangerous apparel and that 
discretion is the better part of a masquerade. 

The League files are crammed with reports 
which have blacker themes — -or the scarlet 
motive which stands for constructive treason. 
There are folders that deal with reported graft 
in the purchase of materials for Army camps 
and subsequent fires which covered up the 

214 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

scanting of buildings. There are others on cases 
of undue influence brought to bear on members 
of exemption boards; and sickening instances of 
"quacks" who have ruined strong but cow- 
ardly young bodies for blood money. There 
are tales of extortion by shyster lawyers for 
filling out questionnaires — and other tales of 
money paid by enemy aliens to disreputable 
"fixers" for pretended protection against the 
draft. 

The mere classified index of the master file 
at Washington intrigues the imagination. Just 
a glance at the main "guides" will indicate 
the range : 

Enemy aliens 
Unfriendly neutrals 
"First-paper" aliens 
Disloyal citizens 
Pro-German "radicals" 

Native-born 

Naturalized 
Disloyal Government employees 
Possible spies or German agents 
Pro-German applicants for Government positions 
Citizens or aliens living in luxury without visible sources 

of income 
Suspicious foreigners 
Enemy propaganda 

(Twenty sub-heads here) 
Enemy alien funds 
Alien extortion cases 

215 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

I. W. W. agitators 

Check of jury panels to keep out pro-Germans 

Incendiary fires in war-material plants 

Wireless stations 

Bomb and dynamite cases 

Passport applicants 

Seditious utterances 

Seditious publications 

Seditious meetings 

Anti-military activities 

Organizations to resist draft 

Attempted draft evasions 

False exemption claims 

Physical disability 

Dependent relatives 
Desertion of wife to enlist in Army 
Fraudulent claims of marriage 
Army deserters 
Impersonation of officers 
Sale of liquor to soldiers and sailors 
Sale of narcotics to men in service 
Hotel surveillance of doubtful transients 
Liberty Bond and Red Cross slackers 
Theft of Red Cross supplies 
Hoarding of foods 
Destruction of foods 
Character and loyalty of applicants for commissions 

In making these investigations the League 
has cooperated, not only with the Department 
of Justice, but also with Army Intelligence, 
Navy Intelligence, the Alien Property Custodian, 
the Food Administration, the Shipping Board, 

216 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., and with various 
other offices at Washington. 

The number and variety of cases handled 
have not constituted the major service of the 
League, however. Rather, it has been the 
character and intelligence of the membership — 
the ability to enter and comb any social, pro- 
fessional, or business circle for information 
without betraying that an inquiry was afoot. 
From this angle alone the original idea was 
pretty close to an inspiration, since it impro- 
vised in the hour of need such an organization 
as not even a generation of effort and many 
million dollars could have built up. 

Just because it was improvised and its per- 
sonnel kept secret, the League could meet the 
most dangerous German agents on their own 
ground and paralyze their efforts by keeping 
them guessing. Propaganda dies on the lips 
of the man who can't be certain that his listener 
is not making mental notes for an official re- 
port of the conversation. And the most subtle 
scheme of spying or sabotage is bound to drag 
when the plot master is harassed by doubts 
of the native-born or naturalized accomplices 
he must enlist for its execution. 

One instance to show how much a local or- 
ganization must depend upon its specialists. 
Last summer it became necessary to know be- 

217 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

yond question whether or not a prominent 
young German-American in a seaboard city 
was supplying the funds for the local agitation 
against the draft. Suspicion attached to him 
because he spent many evenings aboard his 
fast-racing schooner in the yacht club harbour, 
and could not be induced, in any polite and 
casual way, to invite any of the League's yacht- 
ing members aboard. His crew, two Scandi- 
navians, were as voluble as oysters. 

The schooner was being tuned up for the 
annual club cruise late in July. Two extra sail- 
ors would be needed for the race. The League 
provided one of them. An upstanding young 
American, too young for the first officers' train- 
ing camp but in line for the second, was taken 
into the League, carefully coached, and turned 
loose in the harbour with a loaned cat-boat to 
impress the German-American skipper with his 
sailing skill. The boy finessed his approach 
successfully and was asked to train with the 
crew. But he found nothing material to report 
until the schooner had actually won the big 
race. 

That night after the victory had been cele- 
brated in a flood of champagne, which he alone 
avoided, he quietly went through all the private 
papers in the owner's cabin, made notes, or 
copied all that referred in any way to pro- 

218 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

German activities and returned by rail to the 
home port next morning. It turned out that 
the owner had been guilty of no real disloyalty, 
though he had skirted the edge more than once; 
but his papers pointed straight to the real source 
of the propaganda and the latter was speedily 
apprehended. 

Another interesting case was that of a noted 
pro-German "pacifist" who for months was 
kept under surveillance without evidence being 
secured which would bring a conviction under 
the existing law. He had declared again and 
again that nine out of ten Americans were 
opposed to the war; that thousands of armed 
men in Arizona, New Mexico, and western 
Texas were only waiting for the signal to rise 
against the Government; that another thousand 
in New York City were watching for the same 
signal and a leader. He even intimated that 
he had been asked to be that leader. And 
though the League could account for every 
hour of his time, knew every citizen and Con- 
gressman he had conferred with and most of 
the folk he had written to, it was December 
before an indictment could be secured against 
him. 

That this man is still at liberty, on bail, 
until the courts reach the hearing of his case 
is only a detail. The compensating facts are 

219 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

that he served the League for some time as a 
stalking horse for other citizens and aliens of 
doubtful loyalty — that ultimately the close 
watch on him cut down his activities — and 
that under the amended espionage law any 
one of a hundred things he did or said would 
land him quickly in a Federal prison. 

In the application of the Selective Service 
Act the League has taken off the shoulders of 
the Government one of its heaviest and most 
important tasks. The draft was and is a 
favoured field of German agents, who have 
played upon ignorance and prejudice, religious 
and union labour fears, racial antipathies, and 
the baser emotions of cupidity and cowardice. 
They have utilized every device to persuade 
men to avoid their military obligations to the 
country. To the League is assigned the task 
of checking up all claims for exemptions and 
all failures to appear before exemption boards. 
This work, especially in the cities, has entailed 
enormous labour. 

Space forbids a complete review of the League, 
but at least a paragraph may be inserted about 
its organization, which is a model of simplicity 
and flexibility. The League creates and is re- 
sponsible for its own organization in all of its 
branches. Executive control of the organi- 
zation is centred in a Board of National 

220 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 

Directors operating from National Headquar- 
ters at Washington, D. C, in cooperation with 
the Attorney-General and the officials of the 
Bureau of Investigation of the Department of 
Justice, and through the latter with other de- 
partments and agencies of the Government. 

In each local office the chief is supreme. He 
investigates his own men, invites them to join, 
and directs their work. As already stated, 
there is a double organization of the local 
field — a classified organization of trades, pro- 
fessions, industries, hotels, large individual es- 
tablishments, and office buildings; and a Bureau 
of Investigation whose organization is territorial. 
Uniform blanks for reports and records are made 
up after models supplied by national headquar- 
ters, and uniform methods of making investi- 
gations are adopted. This simple plan allows 
each local organization to select the types of 
men that best suit its needs and to adapt itself 
entirely to local conditions, while maintaining 
at the same time complete touch and coopera- 
tion with other communities, with the national 
organization, and with the Government. 

The success of the League is attested by 
Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory himself. 
In his annual report to the Congress of the 
United States he said of the League: "It has 
proved to be invaluable and constitutes a most 

221 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

important auxiliary and reserve force for the 
Bureau of Investigation. . . . This organ- 
ization has been of the greatest possible aid in 
thousands of cases. ... Its work has been 
performed in a thoroughly commendable manner 
with a minimum of friction and complaint and 
with motives of the highest patriotism. It is a 
self-supporting organization, and it would be 
difficult to exaggerate the value of its service 
to the United States Department of Justice." 



222 



CHAPTER X 
The German-Hindu Conspiracy 

THE German-Hindu plot to foment revo- 
lution in India is an international drama 
with touches of "Treasure Island" adventure 
in the South Seas. The characters include Zim- 
mermann, many German agents in the United 
States (among them Bernstorff), some venal 
Americans, and a horde of Hindus — some of 
them ardent fanatics and some plain grafters. 
The climax produced several executions, one 
suicide, two cases of insanity, and a murder. 
The production cost the Germans more than a 
million dollars, and the net receipts were a 
deficit. The scenes were laid in Berlin, Con- 
stantinople, Switzerland, New York, Washing- 
ton, Chicago, San Francisco, Socorro Island, 
Honolulu, Manila, Java, Japan, China, Siam, 
and India. The last act was laid in a Federal 
penitentiary. 

Writing from San Francisco, on November 4, 
19x6, Wilhelm von Brincken, the military attache 
of the German Consulate, addressed a letter to 
his father to be "transmitted through the sub- 

223 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

marine Deutschland on its second voyage from 
the United States." The letter was never de- 
livered; its boastful first paragraph and its later 
candid text were read only by agents of the 
United States Government. Von Brincken be- 
gan: 

My Dear Father: At last an opportunity presents it- 
self to send an uncensored letter to all of you. May the 
carrier, Germany's pride, have a happy voyage and reach 
the home shore unscathed. 

He then launched into bitter criticism of his 
treatment at the Consulate, complaining es- 
pecially of its niggardly support of his work. 
Then lie wrote (the italics are mine): 

As you know, / am the head and organizer of the Hindu 
Nationalists on the Pacific. Revolutionary and propa- 
ganda work costs money — much money. Berlin knows 
that and does not economize. The Consul General [Franz 
Bopp] also is under instructions to support the movement to 
the best of his ability and to further it financially. How- 
ever, there is a shortcoming in this respect. Whenever 
money is urgently needed and I report to that effect, I 
invariably meet with the same opposition. In ninety-nine 
cases out of a hundred, the required amount is refused. 
As a result, the work suffers, is delayed, good opportuni- 
ties are missed, and my people — the Hindus — are fre- 
quently exposed to danger of their lives. Just how many 
fell into the hands of the English and were hung, owing to 
unnecessary lack of funds, is, of course, wholly beyond 
our calculation. The "old man" evidently dislikes this 
type of work and, therefore, has no understanding for it. 

224 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

The other day a Hindu was here, who came directly from 
Switzerland, as messenger from Mr. Von Wesendonck, of 
the Foreign Office {who has charge of Hindu matters there). 
This Hindu wondered why work in San Francisco dragged 
in such a manner and I told him quite frankly that if the 
Hindu work were not reorganized from the ground up, and 
made independent of the Consulate, the work would not 
only suffer but half of it would be harmful. - 

Later in the letter he says: 

My Hindu described Wesendonck as a particularly 
pleasing and fine person. 

These extracts were written in November of 

1916. They illuminate an earlier cable from 

Von Wesendonck's chief, Zimmermann (the 

German Foreign Minister in Berlin) written in 

February of 1916 to Bernstorff at Washington, 

which was "transmitted respectfully for your 

information" to Von Papen in New York, and 

which reads as follows: 

Berlin, Feb. 4, 1916. 
The German Embassy, 

Washington. 

In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled 
by the Committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. 
Dhriendra Sarkar and Heramba Lai Gupta, which latter 
person has meantime been expelled from Japan, thus 
cease to be independent representatives of the Indian 
Independence Committee existing here. 

Zimmermann. 

In other words, before February, 19 16, the 
German Government had been plotting with 

225 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Hindus in the United States for the national 
independence of India. Indeed, they had begun 
the work before 1914, and they had become 
active in it in July of that year — before they 
started the World War, but after they had de- 
cided to start it. By December, they were 
directing Indian plots from Berlin with rami- 
fications in nearly every neutral country in the 
world. Two of these plots were hatched in the 
United States — one in San Francisco and one 
in Chicago. They were conspiracies to organize 
military expeditions to India. Our Govern- 
ment spoiled both of them, and the day after 
we went into the war, or on April 7, 1917, the 
United States' authorities arrested thirty-four 
German-Hindu plotters in half a dozen cities 
and subsequently convicted them all but one 
of conspiracy. 

The story begins in San Francisco. In 191 1, 
a fanatical Indian agitator named Har Dayal 
came to this country. He worked among the 
large colonies of turbaned Hindu labourers on the 
Pacific Coast who had succeeded the Chinese 
and Japanese coolies in the orchards and gardens 
and on the railroad tracks in that region of 
abundant climate and scarce labour. Dayal or- 
ganized the Hindu Pacific Coast Association and 
established its headquarters in San Francisco, 
to which these men came looking for a job or a 

226 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

night's lodging, and where they were fed on 
rice and revolution. Dayal next established a 
printing plant and began to publish a paper 
called Ghadr, which means The Revolution. The 
Ghadr was out for blood. It preached Hindu 
uprising in terms of assassination and dynamite. 
The first number of the Ghadr was published 
in November, 191 3. At once it disclosed a Ger- 
man influence. In the issue of November 15, 

1913, it printed these sentences: "The Germans 
have great sympathy with our movement, be- 
cause they and ourselves have a common enemy 
(the English). In the future Germany can 
draw assistance from us, and they can render 
us great assistance also." 

As the World War approached, this German 
influence became more manifest. On July 21, 

1914, two days before Austria's ultimatum to 
Serbia, the Ghadr said : 

"All intelligent people know that Germany is 
an enemy of England. We also are mortal 
enemies of England. So the enemy of our 
enemy is our friend. " 

A week later, the Ghadr welcomed the ap- 
proach of war: 

"If this war does not start to-day, it will 
to-morrow. So welcome ! India has got her 
chance. . . . Hasten preparations for meet- 
ing with the speed of wind and storm, and no 

227 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

sooner the war starts in Europe, you start a 
mutiny in India." 

And on August 4th it declared : 

"O Warriors! The opportunity that you 
have been searching for years has come . . . 
there is hope that Germany will help you." 

In all this the United States had no interest. 
We were neutral, and what Germany did to 
England was (we thought) England's lookout. 
Also, we were "the asylum of the oppressed" 
and "the home of free speech" — and if the 
Hindus thought they ought to talk revolution 
we were not concerned. It was not until the 
Hindus and the Germans started "gun running" 
from our West Coast that we took a hand. 

Har Dayal, nevertheless, was too ferocious 
even for the home of free speech. Early in 
1 9 14, he made speeches so villainously offensive 
to common decency and order that he was 
arrested and held for deportation on the ground 
of being an undesirable alien. He jumped bail 
in March and fled — to Berlin. He arrived there 
about the time the war clouds began to darken 
the skies of Europe, and found a sympathetic 
haven in the German Foreign Office. In com- 
pany with other Hindu revolutionists, and under 
the fostering care of Von Wesendonck, he or- 
ganized that "Indian Independence Committee 
existing here" of which Zimmermann spoke 

228 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

affectionately in his cable to Bernstorff, already 
quoted. 

In Har Dayal's place in San Francisco arose 
another Hindu revolutionary leader, one Ram 
Chandra. He succeeded to the management of 
the Hindu Pacific Coast Association, to the 
editorship of the Ghadr, and to the sympathetic 
understanding with the German agents in San 
Francisco. These German agents were Bopp, 
the consul-general, and his staff, of whom Von 
Brincken, the military attache, was the agent 
with whom all personal dealings were carried 
on. Of the scores of Hindus with unpro- 
nounceable names and of their noisy speeches 
and noisome writings, there is no need to make 
record. But the warlike activities of the Hindus 
and their German friends were important, dan- 
gerous, and interesting. 

On January 9, 1915, W. C. Hughes, of 103 
Duane Street, New York, shipped ten carloads 
of freight to San Diego, Cal. The freight bill 
was heavy — $11,783.74 — and it was prepaid by 
a check on the Guaranty Trust Company, 
signed by a German named Hans Tauscher. 
This German was the well-known American 
agent of Krupps, and it later developed that 
the ten carloads of freight were eight thousand 
rifles and four million cartridges. They were 
sent to "Juan Bernardo Bowen," in care of 

229 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

M. Martinez & Company, ship brokers of San 
Diego. 

This same " Bowen, " whose home address was 
given as Topolobampo, Mexico, acting through 
the same Martinez & Company, on January 19th, 
chartered a sailing vessel for a round trip from 
San Diego to Topolobampo. This vessel was 
the Annie Larsen. The charter price was 
$19,000, and this money was paid by J. Clyde 
Hizar, of San Diego, "Bowen's" attorney. 
Hizar got the money by wire from a bank in 
San Francisco, which in turn got it from a 
woman depositor, who in turn got it from Von 
Brincken, who in turn got it from the German 
Consulate's funds. This roundabout method 
was, of course, designed to conceal the German 
source of the money. 

At about the same time, a company was or- 
ganized in San Francisco to buy the oil tanker 
Maverick from the Standard Oil Company. 
Fred Jebsen, former lieutenant in the German 
Navy, put up the money. The Maverick was 
commanded by Captain H. C. Nelson, and her 
movements were directed by a young American 
adventurer, J. B. Starr-Hunt, whom Jebson 
put aboard as super-cargo ("super-cargo" is an 
agent put aboard ship by the owner of the mer- 
chandise to have charge of the cargo). Parts of 
a statement subsequently made by young Starr- 

230 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

Hunt tell the rest of the story of the Maverick 
and the Annie Larsen : 

"I was born in San Antonio, Texas, in Novem- 
ber, 1892. I went to a German school in Mexico 
for nine years. Then I was at Dr. Holbrook's 
school for four years at Ossining-on-Hudson, 
New York. I was then for a year at the Uni- 
versity of Virginia; three months at the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Besides 
this I always had private tutors. After leaving 
the last-named college I joined my father's law 
office in Mexico City. This was in the latter 
part of 191 2. My father is one of the leading 
foreign lawyers in Mexico. In December, 191 2, 
I started for San Francisco to join F. Jebsen 
& Co., a German firm of shipping agents. I 
worked in Jebsen's office from February, 191 3, 
to April, 191 5; that is, up to the time I joined 
the Maverick. I was not actually in Jebsen's 
office all this time; I made several trips to 
various parts of the U. S. A. and Mexico. 

"About 1st April, 1915, while I was at Chihua- 
hua, I got a telegram from Jebsen asking me to 
proceed at once to Los Angeles. I met Jebsen 
there. He asked me if I cared to proceed to 
San Jose del Cabo on the Maverick and then 
transfer to another ship, the Annie Larsen y 
either at San Jose* del Cabo or at any other point 
on the Mexican coast. He told me that the 

231 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Annie Larsen s cargo consisted of war material, 
which was to be transhipped to the Maverick 
at whatever point they should meet in Mexican 
or Central American waters; that a man named 
Page (I do not remember his initials, but per- 
haps they were A. W.) who would be on the 
Annie Larsen, was to take charge of the Maverick, 
and that I myself was to take over the Annie 
Larsen and proceed to trade with her in whatever 
manner I might wish to, for six months, between 
Mexican or Central American ports, but I was 
not to return to any American port until after 
the expiration of six months. He did not tell 
me why the Annie Larsen was not to return to 
an American port for six months, but the 
reason was quite clear to me. As a matter of 
fact, I had heard while I was in Chihuahua 
that the Annie Larsen had departed from San 
Diego with a cargo of war material, presumably 
for some belligerent faction in Mexico. She 
had cleared from San Diego for Topolobampo. 
This fact had given rise to considerable comment 
and notoriety. American papers had taken the 
matter up, and the several arrests of Americans 
and Mexicans made by the Government in San 
Diego at the time were popularly believed to 
have been in connection with the Annie Larsen 
and her cargo. Evidently Jebsen, therefore, 
thought that, if the Annie Larsen returned im- 

232 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

mediately to an American port, complications 
might arise. Jebsen was not explicit as to either 
the destination, or the purpose, of the cargo. 
One thing I was, however, sure of was that it 
was not intended for the Mexican rebels. All 
that Jebsen told me was that the cargo was 
intended for the Orient, and in the course of 
conversation he once mentioned Borneo. 

"On the (?) of April, the Maverick finally 
sailed from Los Angeles. On the morning of 
that day Jebsen gave me a sealed letter, ad- 
dressed to nobody, with verbal instructions to 
hand it over to Page on the Annie Larsen 
immediately after I met him. Jebsen seemed 
to be anxious regarding this letter, and warned 
me to be careful and to see that it fell into no other 
hands. He also handed me another unaddressed 
letter to be given to the same man. This was an 
open letter which I read soon after leaving Los 
Angeles. There were two enclosures which 
were printed. One was a circular or memorandum 
of instructions as to how to work the machine 
gun or a small Hotchkiss, the diagram of which 
was given on the second enclosure. I am not 
quite certain of the type of weapon drawn on 
that second enclosure, but I think it was one 
of the two I have mentioned. The printed 
circular was evidently from the makers of that 
arm, but the manufacturer's name was care- 

233 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

fully cut out from it. Jebsen also handed me 
a third letter, without address, for Page, and 
open. It contained typewritten instructions as 
to how to stow the cargo to be transhipped from 
the Annie Lars en. It was just a short note, 
more in the nature of a suggestion than in- 
structions. It said that the cases containing 
rifles were to be stowed in one of the two empty 
tanks of the Maverick and flooded with oil. 
The ammunition cases were to be stowed in the 
other empty tank, which was not to be flooded 
except as a last resort. This note, too, was 
intended for Page. There was a fourth open 
note for myself which contained suggestions as 
to what I should do in future with the Annie 
Larsen. Jebsen, at the same time, made over 
to me a bundle, consisting of about ten letters, 
with instructions to hand it over to Page. All 
these letters were addressed to Captain Oth- 
mann. Although Jebsen did not tell me so, 
I concluded that 'Page' and 'Othmann' were one 
and the same man, and that 'Page' was an as- 
sumed name. 

"The day before sailing Jebsen introduced me 
to a man named B. Miller, who, he said, was a 
Swedish mining engineer, and who was going 
on the Maverick as far as San Jose del Cabo, to 
proceed thence to the mines near La Paz. 
Jebsen asked me to assist Miller in taking five 

234 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

'Persians' from Los Angeles to San Pedro, and in 
finding quarters for them there for the night 
as they were to go on board the Maverick the 
following day. Jebsen told me nothing about 
these five Persians except that they were going 
with the Maverick as passengers right through 
to her destination, and were to be signed on the 
articles as anything. Accordingly I met Miller 
again the same evening at the Los Angeles 
railway station. I found five black men with 
him. On seeing me, he said: 'Here are my men/ 
He purchased tickets for them, and we all left 
by train for San Pedro, where I found lodgings 
for them in a cheap boarding-house for the 
night. 

"The next morning I went on board the 
Maverick at San Pedro, where I met the Port 
Commissioner and the crew, who were already 
on board signed on. Captain Nelson was 
present. Miller signed on as 'store-keeper' 
and the five Persians as 'waiters.' 

"One of the five Persian waiters, named 
Jehangir, was evidently the leader and generally 
kept himself away from the rest. As far as I 
remember, the names of the others were Khan, 
Dutt, Deen, and Sham Slier. Later on I dis- 
covered that all these were false names. Je- 
hangir's real name, I believe, was Hari Singh; 
he signed his accounts and receipts as Hari 

235 



FIGHTING QERMANY'S SPIES 

Singh. I have no idea of the real names of 
the others. 

"Five days after leaving Los Angeles we 
arrived at San Jose del Cabo, 27th April, I 
think. There Miller left us, and there, at 
Nelson's instance, I applied for and got fresh 
clearance for 'Anjer, Java, via Pacific Islands.' 
This is the first time that any definite port 
was mentioned to me as the Maverick's des- 
tination. There were evidently two reasons 
for not obtaining this clearance from the original 
port of departure; first, they did not want the 
American authorities to know the precise desti- 
nation of the Maverick, which already had roused 
a certain amount of suspicion; and, secondly, 
because, I am sure, such a clearance as we 
desired would not be granted by any American 
port. According to it the Maverick could have 
touched at every island in the Pacific before 
arriving at Anjer. Jebsen had given me to 
understand that we might meet the Annie 
Larsen at San Jose del Cabo, but she was not 
there; so we left that port on the 28th of April 
and proceeded to Socorro Island where we 
arrived at 9 p. m. on the 29th and anchored in 
a bay some thirty yards off the shore. As we 
anchored, Nelson informed the crew that he 
was expecting to meet at that place the schooner 
Annie Larsen and asked them to be on the look- 

236 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

out for her. Altogether we were twenty-nine 
days at that island waiting for the schooner, 
which did not turn up after all. By the time 
we had anchored it was very dark and the 
first sign of life on the island was as camp fire 
close to the shore. Shortly after, a small boat 
pulled alongside with two American sailors in it. 
One of them came on the bridge and saw the 
captain, and after putting the question 'Are 
you the people who are looking for the Annie 
Larsen? 9 and getting a reply in the affirmative, 
he said that the Annie Larsen had been at the 
island, and being short of water, had left some 
thirteen days before. He delivered a note to 
Nelson stating that it was left by the Annie 
Larsen s super-cargo, Page. Nelson passed the 
note over to me to read. It was a short note in 
English, saying: 'This will be delivered to you by 
a member of the crew of the schooner Emma, 
who will explain his own position. I have been 
waiting for you a month, and am now going to 
the Mexican West Coast for supplies and water. 
I will return as soon as possible. Please await 
my return/ (Signed) 'Page.' 

"The sailor man then told the following story : 
that he and his companion in the boat and two 
Mexican customs-house officials, who were in 
camp ashore, had left San Jose del Cabo some 
time before on the small American schooner 

237 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

Emma, with a cargo of bark for the Mexican 
port of Loreto; that the captain had proven 
himself incompetent, and they had lost their 
bearings, and after sailing for many days had 
eventually arrived at this island, which the 
master declared was a point close to Man- 
zanillo, but which they discovered to be an 
island. The mate had died at sea; the master's 
name was Clarke. These four men declined to 
go any farther with the captain of that ship 
and preferred to be left on the island on the 
off chance of being picked up by a passing vessel. 
The captain and the cook, the only other mem- 
bers of the crew, had left some days earlier for 
the Mexican coast. At the same time the 
Emma touched the island the Annie Larsen 
was there, and she provided the castaways 
with three empty water tanks, a rifle, and a few 
provisions. Since the departure of the Annie 
Larsen they were hoping for assistance being 
sent to them from the Mexican coast. We 
subsequently discovered that these castaways 
had rigged up a sort of condenser with the aid 
of their tanks and some old piping. 

"The castaway who came on the Maverick 
at Socorro further told us that Page had told 
him that he had left another letter buried 
somewhere on the island close to the shore by 
the bay, which could be easily found if we 

238 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

would make a search for it. Assisted by some 
of the castaways I made a search for the second 
note left by Page and found it buried in a 
bottle under a sign which read: Took Here/ 
The second note was a lengthy repetition of 
the first. Page asked us to help the castaways 
but cautioned us not to take them aboard our 
ship. He said he would return as soon as he 
could get water and that we were to wait for 
him. I returned to the ship with the note 
and read it out to Nelson. Disregarding Page's 
warning not to take the castaways aboard, he 
immediately asked them to come aboard, if they 
cared, which they did. They remained on the 
Maverick till the 6th of May when the American 
collier (Government ship) Nanshan arrived and 
took them off. 

"The following Thursday, 13th May, H. M. S. 
Kent arrived; two officers boarded us immedi- 
ately and examined our papers. They returned 
and came on again the next morning accom- 
panied by several marines. They made a 
thorough search of the vessel this time and 
returned to their ship. Nelson returned the 
call. On his return Nelson told me that the 
Kent's commander had questioned him rather 
closely as to what the Maverick was doing 
there and that in reply he had told him 
that he could not disclose his real purpose 

239 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

but in a roundabout sort of way hinted 
that she was there in connection with the 
Mexican troubles. The Kent remained there for 
about forty hours, during which I struck up 
an acquaintance with several of the officers. I 
directed them where good fishing and shooting 
were to be had and provided them with a few 
supplies. Although there was no water to be 
had on that island there were plenty of wild 
sheep. I am unable to say how they existed 
without water outside the rainy season. 

"The Annie Lars en not turning up, we left 
about the 26th of May. Just before we left 
I went ashore and left there two notes in bottles 
for the Annie Larsen addressed to Page in case 
the ship should turn up after we had left. I 
put one of the bottles in a conspicuous place 
in the castaways' camp. This note read as 
follows: 'Consult our Post Office/ by 'our 
Post Office' I meant the place where Page him- 
self had buried his note for us. The other 
bottle I buried where I had found Page's, and put 
up another signboard saying 'Look again.' This 
note told Page all that had occurred during our 
stay at the island and that we were going some- 
where where we could get further instructions. 

"Immediately after the first boarding party 
from H. M. S. Kent had left the Maverick after 
going through our papers, I was sent for by 

240 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

Captain Nelson on the bridge. When I got up 
there I found him in conversation with Jehangir. 
I gathered from Nelson that Jehangir had aboard 
two sacks and six suitcases full of literature 
which he was very anxious to hide from the 
Kent. We were expecting another visit from 
the Kent for the purpose of searching the ship, 
and Jehangir said he would not like the literature 
to fall into the hands of the Kent party. Jehangir 
did not like the idea of destroying the literature 
and suggested that it should be quietly taken 
ashore and buried there, pending the departure 
of the Kent. Neither Nelson nor myself fell 
in with the suggestion and were of opinion 
that it should be destroyed straight away, if 
it were dangerous to retain it. Jehangir event- 
ually agreed to this and said he would just 
keep a sample of the various papers and pam- 
phlets he had. Nelson grumbled even at that. 
I am not sure whether Jehangir did really pre- 
serve any specimens, but I think he did. The 
two sacks with their contents and the con- 
tents of the six suitcases were immediately 
burnt in the engine room. I personally saw 
some of this literature. It was all printed 
matter in a character unknown to me. Some 
of it was in newspaper form, some in leaflets, 
but most of it was in the form of pamphlets; 
the outside cover being mostly pink. The six 

241 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

empty suitcases were appropriated by various 
members of the crew, I took one of them myself, 
and it is with me at the present moment. 
Later I learned from Jehangir that the literature 
was printed in San Francisco and copies of it 
'existed' in Constantinople and Berlin. 

"Aft^r depositing the two notes on the shore, 
we weighed anchor. Nelson informed me that 
he intended proceeding to San Diego . . . 

"After about thirty hours' absence ashore at 
San Diego the party returned to the Maverick, 
bringing with them a few supplies. Nelson in- 
formed me that he was now going to Hilo, 
Hawaii, and when we were well under way he 
told me that from the Brewster Hotel, San 
Diego, he had rung up Jebsen at San Francisco 
on the long distance telephone and was told 
in reply to wait at the hotel until he heard from 
him (Jebsen) further. The following morning 
he got a wire from Jebsen instructing Nelson 
to proceed to Hilo, Hawaii, where he would 
receive further orders. Nelson said he had no 
word of the Annie Larsen. 

"We left for Coronados Island on or about the 
2d of June and arrived at Hilo on or about the 
14th. Port officials came alongside and de- 
manded who we were and what out business was. 
The captain told them what sort of clearance 
we had and that we had entered Hilo to commu- 

242 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

nicate with his owners. At about 8 p. m., when 
it was dark, Captain Elbo, of the war-bound 
German merchantman Ahlers, came alongside in 
a small dinghy rowed by one German sailor and 
asked to be allowed aboard to speak to the 
captain. Nelson spoke to him over the rail, 
declining to take the German captain aboard as 
the health officer had not cleared the ship, but 
offered to see him the following morning. Be- 
fore Elbo left, however, he passed a note up to 
Nelson, who showed it to me later on in his 
cabin. It read as follows: 'Maverick is to 
proceed to Johnson Island and then await the 
arrival of the schooner Annie Larsen and the 
rest of the ship's programme is to be just as 
settled before/ namely, that after transferring 
the cargo to the Maverick, the Maverick was to 
proceed on her original voyage. 

"Later Captain Elbo took us to the office of 
Hackfield & Company. There we met a young 
German named Schroeder who, Elbo gave us to 
understand, was the chief representative of the 
Maverick Company at Honolulu and had spe- 
cially come down to Hilo to meet Nelson about 
Maverick's future plans. It appeared that while 
we were still at the Collector's office a war- 
telegrams slip had been out, and among other 
items of interest was mentioned the arrival in 
Hilo of the mysterious ship Maverick, whose 

243 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

captain had made a statement that he had been 
trading in the South Sea Islands and he intended 
leaving for Anjer, Java, stopping at Johnson 
Island on the way. Schroeder had seen this 
slip just before we called on him and was 
apparently highly indignant that Nelson should 
have disclosed the future movements of the 
Maverick to the press representative. Schroeder 
told Nelson that it would be impossible for him 
to permit him, Nelson, to go on to Johnson 
Island after the news had been made public and 
that he, Schroeder, would have now to recast 
his plans. He asked Nelson to wait at Hilo 
till he should hear from him from Honolulu, 
where he, Schroeder, must return to arrange 
for fresh plans. At Nelson's request Schroeder 
authorized Hackfleld to pay all bills f O. K'd' 
by Nelson and to give him such money as he 
might require. 

"Thus we were at Hilo close on two weeks, 
during which time I personally attended to all 
the ship's needs. I was assisted by Captain 
Elbo. 

"A couple of days before we sailed from Hilo, 
Nelson and I met Elbo and another captain of a 
war-bound German merchantman in Honolulu, 
who, we were told, had specially come down to 
give Nelson final instructions. The Honolulu 
captain told us that the original plans of the 

244 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

Maverick were now finally abandoned, as it was 
impossible to use the Maverick any more for the. 
purpose she was intended for, in view of the 
notoriety she had obtained. The Maverick was 
now to proceed to Anjer-Java, calling at Johnson 
Island; that on arrival at Anjer she was to clear 
for Batavia and report herself to Behn Meyers, 
the Maverick Company's agents. Elbo and the 
Honolulu captain came aboard the Maverick. 
The Honolulu captain had a private talk with 
me alone in my cabin. He handed me a sealed 
packet which evidently contained a plate of 
something heavy. The letter was unaddressed. 
I was instructed to hand this over to Helfferich 
at Behn Meyers upon arrival in Batavia. I did 
not know then who this Helfferich was, nor did 
I ask who he was. I was merely told that 
he was the manager of Behn Meyers. I was 
asked to be careful of that letter, and I was not 
to give it to anybody else. Shortly after, the 
Honolulu captain and Elbo left, and we put 
to sea. 

"When we were a couple or three days out of 
Hilo, Hari Singh, during a conversation, referred 
once more to the literature we had destroyed at 
Socorro, and said that it was the product of many 
of his countrymen who were in America and that 
he himself had contributed to it. He claimed to 
have the whole of it by heart and could repeat it 

245 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

without mistake. He was evidently an exile, 
for he said that 'during the many years of his 
exile from India' he had at various times written 
a good deal against the British rule in India. 
He gave me to understand that formerly he 
belonged to the Indian Army. He said his 
home was in the far interior of the country 
inhabited by ignorant classes, and that if he 
could only succeed in getting to them, he would 
easily incite them to revolt against the British 
Government by promising to provide them with 
arms and ammunition. He was still under the 
impression that we were on our way to India, and 
said that he knew the place we were bound for 
very well, and so did the other four, and that 
he could be of great assistance after we got 
there. 

"We got to Johnson Island five days after our 
departure from Hilo. There was no Annie Lar- 
sen there. I went ashore together with the mate 
and left a bottle with a message as follows: 
'The American steamer Maverick entered and 
cleared here to-day/ We left there the same 
afternoon and made for Anjer, Java. After over 
three weeks' voyage we arrived at Anjer about 
the 20th of July. After examination we asked for 
and obtained permission to proceed to Batavia, 
and we set sail the same afternoon accompanied 
by a Dutch torpedo boat. Early next morning 

246 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

we arrived outside Batavia, and later we were 
taken into port by the harbour master. 

"Two or three days outside Anjer I read the 
letter made over to me by Jebsen at Los Angeles 
for Page. Owing to Jebsen's warning to be care- 
ful about it, I had always carried this letter on 
my person so as not to lose it. The result was 
that the envelope had almost fallen to bits; 
now and again I put the letter, together with the 
old cover, into a new envelope, but toward the 
end they, too, got broken up. So I had not to 
open it to read it. The contents were type- 
written in German, and were a sheet and a half 
of the ordinary square business paper. As far 
as I am able to recollect, the letter read as 
follows : 'Upon the meeting of the Annie Larsen 
with the Maverick at . . . (blank) the 
transhipment of the cargo must be commenced 
at once. The official reason to be given out 
was that the Maverick is going to Batavia or 
some other Oriental port to be sold or chartered. 
It may be suggested that she is good for oil 
trade on the China Coast. The cases con- 
taining rifles should be stowed in one of the two 
empty tanks and flooded, and the cases of 
ammunition should be placed in the other, but 
need not be flooded unless as a last resort. 
Maverick should then proceed to Anjer, Java. 
No attempt is to be made to escape from British 

247 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

warships, if encountered at sea, nor should she 
try to avoid meeting merchantmen or warships 
of other nationalities. In case of her meeting 
a warship she should act in a manner abso- 
lutely open and above suspicion. In case of her 
being boarded by enemy officers all cordiality 
should be shown to them, and, in fact, an in- 
spection should actually be offered, to put them 
off their suspicion. Under no condition is the 
steamer or the cargo to be permitted to fall 
into their hands. Should the cargo be dis- 
covered, and should there be no escape from 
capture, the Captain is ordered not to hesitate 
to have recourse to the last resort, namely, to 
sink the ship. Upon arriving at Anjer the 
Maverick will be met in the Sunda Strait by 
a small friendly boat which will instruct you 
regarding further details. Should you not be 
met at Anjer you are to proceed to Bangkok, 
where you are to arrive toward dusk. Here 
you will be met by a German pilot who will 
give you further instructions; should you not 
be met here, also, you are to proceed to Karachi. 
Outside Karachi the Maverick is to be met by 
numerous small friendly fishing craft. The 
fishing craft, together with the five blacks 
aboard, will attend to the unloading and landing 
of the cargo. Two of the blacks should go 
ashore immediately on arrival and proceed in- 

248 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

land to notify your arrival to "the people. " 
The remaining three blacks and the friendly 
natives will assist in burying the cargo. Should 
no friendly fishing boats meet you, two of the 
blacks should go ashore and do the notifying 
of the people.' 

"After the mission was over, that is whether 
the Maverick was successful or not, she was to go 
to Batavia and report to Behn Meyers & Com- 
pany. The last instruction in the letter was 
that all undelivered papers were to be handed 
over to Behn Meyers. In accordance with this 
I made over the letter to Helfferich on our 
arrival. 

"After we had been in. the harbour (Batavia) 
for about an hour or so a German came aboard 
and introduced himself as Kolbe, 2d Officer of 
the war-bound merchantman Silesia. Nelson 
signed me to leave them alone, which I did. 
After they had conversed for about twenty 
minutes, Kolbe, Nelson, and myself went ashore 
together and motored down to Helfferich's 
residence at Konigsplein W. 8. On the way 
we stopped at the American Consulate; Nelson 
went in alone. While waiting for him outside 
in the car I had a talk with Kolbe. He knew 
all about the Maverick and her mission. When 
I told him that I should like to interview the 
manager of Behn Meyers to deliver the letter 

249 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

given to me by Dinart at Hilo, Kolbe replied 
that Helfferich, the man we were on our way 
to, was the manager and I could make the 
letter over to him. Dinart had not mentioned 
Helfferich by name at the time of handing 
the letter to me. He asked me just to de- 
liver it to Behn Meyers. When Nelson joined 
us again we proceeded to Helfferich's place 
where I met for the first time the brothers 
Theodore and Emile Helfferich. Kolbe and I 
retired to another part of the house while 
Nelson and the brothers held a conversation 
for half an hour or so. After Nelson had done, 
he left with Kolbe, leaving me with the brothers. 
I spent about an hour with them. I gave 
Theodore Helfferich Dinart's letter which he 
opened in my presence. It was a typewritten 
sheet in code. Helfferich said it would take 
him some time to decode it. The 'weight' inside 
the letter I have spoken of was what looked like 
a thin slab of lead enclosed in another cover. 
Helfferich opened this cover and on seeing that 
it was a thin slab, threw it aside without taking 
the trouble of examining it closely. I have no 
idea what it was for, but I imagine that in 
case it had to be suddenly thrown overboard 
the weight inside the cover would sink the 
letter at once. I told them all about our trip, 
and showed them the letters I had brought with 

250 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

me. Helfferich read the letter intended for 
Page, and remarked that the arrangements 
made at this end were substantially the same 
as those indicated in the letter. He said the 
signals were the same, and password was the 
same, and the code was the same. Emile 
spoke up and said that he had waited for the 
Maverick for three weeks in the Sunda Strait. 
They deeply regretted the failure of the Maverick 
in not bringing the arms and said that their 
arrangements on this side were excellent and 
they were only waiting the arrival of the cargo 
when they could have easily put their whole 
scheme through. They observed that 'the 
people' in India were all ready and prepared 
and had only been waiting for the arms to turn 
up. They did not discuss their own scheme 
with me. Theodore Helfferich expressed his dis- 
gust at the Maverick being thrust upon him 
and could not understand the object of her 
being sent to Batavia when she was not carrying 
the cargo, and when she could have as easily 
returned to America. It was then arranged 
that I should take up my lodging in a hotel 
ashore and in the meantime Helfferich would 
decipher the code letter. Things were to be 
left alone until he had read that. 

"A couple of days after, I was rung up by 
Helfferich and I went and saw him at his place 

251 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

in the evening. He had deciphered the letter 
which had 'originated' from San Francisco. 
Helfferich said that the letter directed the 
abandonment of the Maverick, which was either 
to be sold or chartered to anybody or that she 
could be used for any regular purpose if Helf- 
ferich so desired. She was, if not sold, to be 
retained in this part of the world and on no 
account to be returned to America." 

So fizzled the German-Hindu gun-running 
expedition to India. The Maverick had arrived, 
with five "Persians" and no guns, at a Dutch port 
in the Indies — not India. The Hindus and the 
crew scattered to the winds; Starr-Hunt started 
to return to Los Angeles but was detained by 
the British authorities at Singapore, and ulti- 
mately appeared in the Federal court-room at 
San Francisco as the chief witness for the 
Government in its case against the German 
consul and his staff, the complacent Americans, 
and the Hindu conspirators. The Annie Larsen 
wandered up and down the Pacific Coast, and 
finally put in at Hoquiam, Wash., where she 
was promptly seized and her cargo of arms 
and ammunition locked up by the United 
States Government. 

Von Brincken bore bitter testimony to the fail- 
ure of the Maverick expedition, in the course of a 
"Report Concerning My Activities at the Im- 

252 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

perial Consulate in San Francisco, California" — 
a report written November 10, 1916, and in- 
tended for the eyes of the German Foreign 
Office. He said: 

"I complied with that instruction and met 
Ram Chandra and other leaders of the Hindu 
Nationalists, and there laid the foundation for 
the entire Hindu work which has since then been 
carried out here on the Pacific. . . . Up to 
the present date, I have fulfilled this assignment 
absolutely alone . . . Mr. Von Schack has 
seen Ram Chandra only a few times during the 
entire period — while Consul-General Bopp saw 
the man only once. I had nothing to do with 
the ship-matters in connection with the Hindu 
affair. Therefore, I am not responsible for the 
failure of the 6 Maverick Expedition/ I had only 
planned the point of landing at Karachi. Besides, 
through messengers, I had prepared the populace 
of the Punjab for the arrival of the Maverick." . 

At the time of the Maverick enterprise, and 
after its failure, the Germans engineered a half 
dozen plots with the Hindus, looking toward 
revolution in India. Von Papen in New York 
directed a scheme for an incursion into north- 
western India through Afghanistan. The Ger- 
man Consul-General in Chicago shipped two 
German officers and two Hindu agitators to 
the Orient to train Hindu soldiers in upper Siam 

253 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

for an invasion of Burma. Wesendonck sent 
Har Dayal from Berlin to Constantinople to 
act as chairman of a committee of Moham- 
medans who were to incite the Mussulman 
population of India to revolt. Ram Chandra, 
at the instigation of Von Brincken, sent Hindu 
emissaries from San Francisco to organize revo- 
lutionary movements among the Indians in Ma- 
nila, Tokyo, Shanghai — even in Seoul and Peking. 
Other emissaries, gathering men and money or 
transmitting messages, worked in Panama, in 
Switzerland, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Sweden — 
scarcely a country in the world but was touched 
by a filament of this spider's web of German 
intrigue. 

And, like gossamer, it all came to airy nothing- 
ness. A few dacoities [robberies accompanied 
by violence], a few vain attempts to suborn 
loyal native troops in India, were the net results 
of enormous labours, lengthy journeys, and huge 
expenditures of money. 

By December, 1915, the German Govern- 
ment became impatient of this much ado about 
nothing. But it did not abandon hope. Zim- 
mermann summoned a little, nervous, excitable 
Hindu from New York to Berlin. Dr. Chak- 
ravarty left America on a false passport, and in 
February, 1916, was appointed in Berlin to head 
the Indian intrigues in America. Zimmermann's 

254 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

cable to Bernstorff, quoted in the first part of 
this article, notified the German authorities here 
of his appointment. By August, Dr. Chakrav- 
arty was in San Francisco, consulting with Ram 
Chandra and the Germans there. 

Chakravarty and Ram Chandra had one thing 
in common — both knew the value of real estate. 
Out of their joint operations in the insubstantial 
pursuit of Indian liberty, each emerged with 
some perfectly sound investments in mundane 
property, paid for with money subtracted from 
the German gold that passed through their hands 
for the "freeing of the oppressed." Chakrav- 
arty put about forty thousand dollars into New 
York apartments, and Ram Chandra several 
thousands into residence and business property 
in San Francisco. 

Ram Chandra's real-estate ventures got him 
into trouble. They gave the needed opportunity 
to his rival for control of the Hindu organization 
in California. This rival was Bhagwan Singh, 
the poet and orator of the "Movement." Late 
in 1916, he accused Ram Chandra of stealing 
Hindu funds. The directors of the Hindu 
Pacific Coast Association investigated the charge, 
and threw Ram Chandra out. Bhagwan Singh 
became president of the association and editor 
of the Ghadr. A few months later, when the 
United States entered the war, the whole crew 

255 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

was arrested, along with the German agents 
in San Francisco and Honolulu and with the 
Americans and German-Americans implicated in 
the Maverick enterprise. 

The trial of these men was one of the most 
picturesque scenes ever enacted in an American 
court. In the prisoner's dock aggressive blond 
German officers sat beside anaemic, swarthy, 
turbaned Hindus and plain American business 
men. To make the evidence intelligible to the 
jury, a map of half the world was painted on one 
wall of the court-room, showing America and 
Asia and the Pacific Ocean, splotched with red 
dots and routes of travel. Beside the map were 
printed the names of the defendants, so that 
their strangeness might be somewhat simplified. 
Among the polyglot evidence were Hindu publi- 
cations in six Oriental languages, including Per- 
sian; cipher messages which, when deciphered, 
proved to be an Indian revolutionist's letters 
which had to be translated by reference to page 
and line of an American's book about "Germany 
and the Germans"; enciphered code, written 
in Berlin by the German Foreign Minister, 
transmitted to Stockholm and thence by the 
Swedish Government to Buenos Aires and thence 
by Count Luxburg to Bernstorff in Washington, 
telling him to pay an East Indian in New York 
money for use in San Francisco to send arms to 

256 



THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 

revolutionists near Calcutta — besides other 
oddities of men and places and documents too 
numerous to mention. 

The episode of the Maverick and the Annie 
Larsen occupied a large place in the trial. One 
of the humours of that fiasco was the proof that 
"Juan Bernardo Bowen," of Topolobampo, 
Mexico, was a romantic imagining to conceal 
plain Bernard Manning of San Diego. There 
was no Juan Bernardo. The man who got 
Tauscher's shipment of arms for the Annie 
Larsen was Manning. 

The prosecution proved that the funds for 
the purchase of the Maverick and for the charter 
of the Annie Larsen were got from the German 
Consulate's bank accounts in San Francisco, and 
were concealed by an elaborate jugglery through 
a chain of American lawyers and shipping agents 
in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. 

The end of the story is briefly told in the 
following despatch to the New York Sun, dated 
San Francisco, April 24, 191 8 : 

Twenty-nine men, charged with conspiring on Ameri- 
can soil to start a revolution against British rule in India, 
were found guilty by a jury in Federal Court early to-day. 

Just as court adjourned for the noon recess yesterday, 
the last day of the trial, Ram Singh, a defendant, shot 
and killed Ram Chandra, another defendant. United 
States Marshal James Holohan shot Ram Singh dead in his 
tracks. 

257 



CHAPTER XI 

Dr. Scheele, Chemical Spy 

ONE day the Department of Justice in 
Washington received a brief code message, 
dated from Havana, saying that "Dr. Scheele" 
was coming home. The War Department also 
had received a code message; these started 
a little hum of activity. The messages gave 
a key to the possession of certain papers. 
Hurriedly a special agent of the Department 
of Justice was provided with a letter written in 
the cipher designated. The agent spoke Ger- 
man, looked German, and hastened to the home 
of an unsuspecting custodian of some of the 
Fatherland's most damaging records, and there 
arranged with the guardian for a safer place 
for such papers. But the duly-accredited 
messenger wasn't German at all, and the 
papers handed over widened out the trail of 
one big German plot. 

Who was this Dr. Scheele? He was a quiet 
German chemist who sometimes aided the 
police in detecting traces of crime. JDidn't 
his neighbours know him? Of course; he was 

258 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

that genial and entertaining German-American 
who owned a drug store in Brooklyn, one of 
the desirable kind of citizens, the law-abiding 
kind of foreigner whom we welcomed in our 
midst. Did the business world know him? 
Yes; he was president of the New Jersey Agri- 
cultural Chemical Company, a concern which 
kept its contracts and paid its debts. America 
was satisfied with this president, the adopted 
son, who had married an American wife and 
resided peacefully among us for twenty-four 
years, Why not ? 

When the French liner La Lorraine caught 
fire at sea with hospital nurses and supplies 
of mercy on board, what could this have to do 
with an inconspicuous druggist in Brooklyn? — 
or when numerous ships sailed loaded with sugar 
or supplies for the needy neutrals abroad, and 
never after were heard of? 

Finally a British cruiser with an inquisitive 
captain overhauled the steamship Rize which 
was carrying a cargo of fertilizer badly needed 
for the fields in Denmark. There was nothing 
particularly suspicious about a cargo packed 
in sacks, just ordinary brown powdered fer- 
tilizer of the most common variety and shipped 
by the New Jersey Agricultural Chemical Co. 
But for some reason the papers didn't entirely 
satisfy. The cargo was confiscated, analyzed, 

259 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

and an astonished chemist reported that the 
" fertilizer " was composed of highest grade 
lubricating oil, mixed with a certain chemical 
which had reduced the oil to a solid but when 
the mixture was treated with a little acid 
the sacks yielded oil fit for the Kaiser's best 
Unterseeboten. 

The Department of Justice paid an official 
call on the New Jersey company — the " Pres- 
ident " was away; he remained away during 
two years of very painstaking search by the 
officials of the Department's secret service, 
which had an ever-increasing desire to make 
the acquaintance of the inconspicuous chemist 
who seemed to possess some of the mythical 
powers of the ancient alchemists. 

There seemed also to be an unusual bank 
account connected with this gentleman, engaged 
in such magnificent business enterprises, that 
yielded such meagre profits, as were evidenced 
by the President's home life and general cir- 
cumstances. Who is he, and where is he? 
were questions that vexed the bureau in Wash- 
ington. Two years rolled by; numbers of 
Germans connected with "the Doctor" were 
sent to jail, but only rumours were got of trails 
of the chemist. 

Fate, however, transferred our story to the 
shadowy neighbourhood of Morro Castle; there, 

260 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

an excited and still unidentified German who 
was trying to board a vessel at Matanzas, 
Cuba, for a port in Mexico, was brought into 
Havana in front of the bayonets of a not-too- 
careful Rural Guard. Then a newly arrived 
representative of the Department of Ju c "Lc 
undertook some negotiations with th^ rvoan 
Government for a safe passage b^ for a 
certain Dr. Walter T. Scheele and , xiis pay- 
master. 

An ancient fort, which is the military prison 
in Havana and a part of the old fortified wall 
which follows the water front of the picturesque 
harbour, was shrouded in darkness when the 
hour of departure arrived. Between the old 
fort and the grim outline of "the Monro" 
lay a Cuban gunboat with black smoke pouring 
out of her funnels; a tropical storm blowing 
in over the Gulf Stream alternately darkened 
the sky a deeper tone and lit it up with vivid 
lightning flashes. Presently a little group ap- 
peared on the sea walls and a flash of lightning 
showed an American in plain clothes, the regalia 
of the agents of Justice and a colonel of the 
regular army who were signing a receipt for 
two quiet figures in alpine hats. A courteous 
Cuban officer saluted and shook hands with 
the departing guests, handcuffs were silently 
slipped on to thick German wrists, and the little 

261 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

steam pinnace of the warship sped off through 
the darkness alongside its gangway. 

An interview none the less sombre and creepy 
occurred on the other side of the Gulf Stream 
within the walls of Fort Taylor. Two automobiles 
iven up in the darkness to an emplace- 
n ggjjeath the shadow of a heavy gun. The 
party vvhld 1 na d left Havana descended in a 
dimly lighted courtyard where a squad of non- 
commissiont A offices was waiting. One figure 
in an alpine ibat had to be lifted from the 
automobile while the other stood erect. 

Here is the story of ^r. Scheele, the more im- 
portant of these two agents of the Kaiser: 

Twenty-five years ago a German youth (one 
of the favourite pupils of the great chemist, 
Professor Keukle) graduated at Bonn. He 
came of an illustrious family; his grandfather, 
the Swedish professor, Scheele, discovered 
chlorine gas. His father, born in Germany, 
died in the discovery of " prussic acid," the 
most quickly fatal drug known. The youth, 
with sixteen deep scars on his head and face 
from duelling under the vicious German code, 
was a man of proved valour. Who was better 
to send to the great developing home of liberty 
and freedom and study its industry, and pre- 
pare for a day which was already dazzling the 
newly enthroned Kaiser ? 

262 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

Dr. Hugo Schweitzer was chosen to go with 
him and collaborate. He, as the head of the 
Bayer Chemical Company — a German concern 
that practically monopolized the trade in syn- 
thetic drugs in the United States — was to report 
on, to model, or undermine our development of 
industrial chemistry. Dr. Scheele was to re- 
port on and develop the plan and chemistry 
of warfare, explosives, incendiaries, poison gas, 
and the products Germany should import and 
accumulate to make her sure and independent 
on the day she should strike the world. Did 
these young men faithfully accomplish their 
tasks ? 

Dye making was almost an unknown art in 
America when the war broke out; chlorine gas was 
a laboratory curiosity; potash was a German 
salt — we had been led to believe our millions of 
tons of the mineral were insoluble. Where neces- 
sary, those of our chemists who had learned the 
secrets were retained and paid. The list of our 
chemical houses reads like the telephone di- 
rectory of Unter den Linden, and the Alien 
Property Custodian has since spent many nights 
over their affairs. 

While the German plenipotentiaries were 
busy at The Hague agreeing to the elimination 
of poison gas and incendiaries from warfare, 
their chemists in the United States, paid 

263 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

regularly but meagrely through the Embassy 
at Washington, exchanged views in writing 
and by cable with the chemists of the Father- 
land over the most fatal methods for the use 
of the gas which had just been developed for 
the purpose. 

Mustard gas was used against the Allies 
in 19 1 7, a new and atrocious device, "only 
discovered and recently used by the Germans 
because of the brutality of their enemies." 
A few formulae for this product were in Dr. 
Scheele's laboratory in New York about five 
years before the war, and tactics of the uses 
discussed in the trips which he made home every 
two years "to keep up to date/' 

Two methods of stifling American production 
have not yet been mentioned. The first was 
this: When a man began to make a reputation 
as a chemist in an American-owned concern, 
he was hired away to work for a German- 
owned factory. Salary was no consideration; 
they simply bid the price required to get him. 
The second method was: when an American 
chemist invented a new product or a new 
process, and patented it, it was bought from 
him before it could be commercially developed. 
Again price was no consideration. The only 
instructions were: "Pay as little as you can, 
but get it." 

264 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

The operation of this system was the duty 
of Dr. Scheele and Dr. Schweitzer. Report- 
ing to them was at least one loyal German 
chemist in every chemical factory in the United 
States; dozens of them in the larger ones. At 
their disposal were the resources of the Imperial 
German Government. These, too, were made 
accessible through Dr. Heinrich Albert in 
German-American banking and brokerage con- 
cerns, chiefly G. Amsinck & Company, the 
Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, and Knauth, 
Nochode & Kuhne, of New York, every one of 
them in reality a local American agency of one 
or another of the imperially controlled banks of 
Germany and Austria — such as the Reichsbank, 
the Disconto Gesellschaft, or the Deutsche Bank. 

The chief of these American branches was 
G. Amsinck & Company, operating as commis- 
sion merchants and private bankers. The head 
of this concern was Adolf Pavenstedt, an 
accomplished man of the world, a shrewd 
banker, and under the iron discipline of the 
Kaiser's military organization. Pavenstedt 
lived at the German Club in Central Park 
South, in New York, took his vacations in 
Cuba in the winter and the Berkshires in the 
summer, was received in the best society in 
New York, passed easily in Wall Street as a 
man of large personal fortune and of sound 

265 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

business judgment — altogether a characteristic 
German hypocrite and government agent acting 
under Dr. Albert and Bernstorff. He was a 
paymaster of Germany's nation-wide organi- 
zation to control our industrial life, to spy 
out our military plans, and to keep us power- 
less against the day when Prussia should be 
ready to sweep the world. He was also the finan- 
cial go-between in the Bolo Pasha case. Fortu- 
nately, he has now long been a resident of an 
Army internment camp. 

Two years ago the Government indicted 
Dr. Scheele for his part in the incendiary 
bomb plot. The details of this fiendish device 
will be given later in the story. Dr. Scheele 
was forewarned of probable detection on the 
31st of March, 1916, by a special-delivery 
letter telling him to see Wolf von Igel immedi- 
ately at 60 Wall Street in New York. Von 
Igel told him to start for Cuba by the next train. 
Dr. Scheele feared that such a precipitate 
flight would expose him to certain arrest. 
Hence, he violated his instruction and went 
south to Jacksonville by easy stages. There 
he called upon one Sperber, the editor of the 
Florida Deutsche Staatszeitung, who warned 
him not to sail from Key West, as that port 
was being watched both by our officers and 
by the British cruisers outside the three-mile 

266 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

limit. Sperber gave Dr. Scheele letters of 
introduction and credentials under the name 
of W. T. Rheinfelder, to act as a correspondent 
for his paper. He supplied him also with 
fake calling cards and other forged documents, 
establishing him in his role. Still fearing to 
leave for Cuba, he waited. 

His superiors again instructed him to go 
to Cuba. He landed in Cuba on April 16th. 
There he reported to the German Minister, 
Count Verdy du Vernois, who passed him on 
to an attache of the Legation with this strange 
result: that Dr. Scheele next found himself 
installed as a "guest" in the house of one Juan 
Pozas, under the name of James G. Williams, 
and in the character of a visiting American. 

His strange and unexpected host appeared 
at first to be simply a wealthy Cuban merchant. 
His manner of life strengthened this impression. 
Dr. Scheele found himself comfortably installed 
in a large room in a magnificent house, sur- 
rounded by grounds of a city block square, 
in the suburb Guana Bacca of Havana. In 
reality, Pozas was the king of the Cuban 
smugglers. His splendid establishment and his 
social prestige rested upon a picturesque founda- 
tion of the work of silent men in little boats 
working in the dark of the moon along the 
tropical Cuban shore. 

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FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

To Dr. Scheele, Pozas soon appeared to be 
not only host but jailer. Though he was 
treated with every courtesy and as a member 
of the family, he was not allowed outside the 
house for six months after his arrival. The 
confinement so told upon his health that he 
was finally permitted the freedom of the garden, 
and, to while away the time, he worked among 
the flowers, making at length a beauty spot 
of the whole place. At the same time, he was 
devoting other spare hours to covering the 
walls of the Pozas mansion with beautiful 
mural paintings. Again it may be noted that 
Dr. Scheele is a remarkable man. 

In this strange retreat the doctor spent 
two years. Then suddenly, without warning, 
he was hurried hither and yon about the island, 
travelling under guard by automobile by night, 
and lying hidden by day in the houses of trusted 
German agents. He finally arrived at Man- 
tanzas. Here, the man in whose house 
he was to stay hidden became fearful that he 
would be discovered there and the man him- 
self get into desperate trouble. He, therefore, 
directed Dr. Scheele to a neighbouring hotel, 
but the doctor was unable to obtain accommo- 
dation, so that he spent the night sitting in a 
railroad station. 

Simultaneously another German of Havana 
268 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

was taken into custody. He was implicated 
in the Scheele affair by reason of his payments 
to the doctor, besides being involved in numer- 
ous violations of the neutrality of Cuba, for 
which the Cuban Government meant to hold 
him responsible. 

The close investigation of this man revealed 
much valuable data. A collection of papers 
had been buried by Dr. Scheele in the tropical 
garden he had built about the Pozas mansion. 
There they were unearthed by the agent of 
the Department of Justice of the United States 
who had gone to Cuba to bring him back. 
Taking a pick and shovel and digging among 
the flowers cherished by the doctor, he found 
these damning documents from Potsdam, con- 
taining their secret instructions for the working 
out of the industrial conquest of Vereinigten 
Staaten — These United States. 

Another set of documents was obtained by 
a very clever piece of work by agents of the 
Department of Justice. These were papers 
left behind by Wolf von Igel when he left 
the United States — papers that he dared not 
risk having seized and read by the British 
authorities on his way to Germany. They 
were packed in a suitcase and were committed 
to the care of a German in Englewood, New 
Jersey. On instructions from the head office 

269 



FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

of the Department of Justice In Washington, 
agents in the New York office of the Depart- 
ment wrote out in German, on a typewriter, 
the letter telling this German to deliver the 
suitcase to the bearer and including in its mes- 
sage the magic password. This letter was 
entrusted to an agent who spoke German 
perfectly. 

He executed the commission without a hitch. 
He called upon the German and introduced 
himself in low tones as a loyal subject of the 
Kaiser and asked to be taken into the house. 
There he presented his letter. When the Ger- 
man read it, he broke into a hearty laugh and 
said the password no longer really applied, 
because it referred to the coal pile. He had 
found, on account of the coal shortage, that 
at times he could not keep enough coal in 
the cellar to keep the suitcase covered, and 
that consequently he had had to conceal it 
elsewhere in the house. The caller joined 
him in laughter at this piece of humour, and the 
German excused himself and soon returned 
with the suitcase. It was not till several 
days later that he had the slightest inkling 
that the man he had entertained was an oper- 
ative of the American Government. 

The plot for which Dr. Scheele was brought 
to earth was only a detail in the vast scheme 

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DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

of Germany's treachery, but it was one of the 
most dastardly and most dramatic of those 
details, and its detection and unravelling re- 
vealed the men at the head of the German 
system in this country and their mutual rela- 
tionships. In a previous chapter I have told 
something of the career of Franz von Rintelen. 
At this point he appears as an agent of Ger- 
many seeking to destroy the ships bearing 
American supplies to the Allies. One day 
Dr. Scheele received a caller, Eno Bode, 
a captain in the service of the North Ger- 
man Lloyd Steamship Company. Bode bore 
a card from Von Papen, ordering Scheele to 
execute any orders which Bode gave. Von 
Papen's orders, in their turn, had come through 
Rintelen. 

Bode now disclosed to Dr. Scheele a most 
infernal plan. He was instructed to invent a 
bomb of simple mechanism, which could be placed 
in a ship's cargo or its coal and which would 
not explode, but set fire to anything inflammable 
with which it came in contact. It must be 
devised to operate at any predetermined time 
after it was placed on board. 

To Dr. Scheele, a great chemist himself and 
possessed of every secret of the greatest nation 
of chemists in the world, this was a simple 
order. In his instructions he was forbidden 

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FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

to apply for his materials to any American 
concern through which the purchase might 
ever be traced. Consequently, he asked for 
technical assistance and was referred to Captain 
Carl Schmidt, the chief engineer of the Fried- 
rich der Grosse, one of the great German 
liners interned at Hoboken. Schmidt placed 
at his disposal Charles Becker, the electrician 
of the Friedrich der Grosse. From him he 
obtained sections of lead pipe and thin sheets 
of lead and tin. The chemicals were easily 
obtained from strictly German sources. 

Dr. Scheele now made a few experiments 
and quickly evolved a bomb that was as simple 
as it was efficient. It consisted merely of a 
section of lead pipe, about two and a half 
inches in diameter and three or four inches 
long. This cylinder was separated into two 
water-tight compartments by a thin disk of 
the sheet tin. In one of the two compartments 
was placed a chemical, and in the other a 
corrosive acid. The ends were then sealed 
and the bomb was complete. The acid slowly 
ate its way through the tin partition, and when 
at length a tiny hole was made, the acid and 
the chemical mingled and their action was to 
produce, without noise, a heat so intense 
that it melted the lead in the cylinder and the 
whole bomb flowed down into a molten mass 

272 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

so fervent that it would ignite any ordinary 
substance, such as coal or wood. No timing 
mechanism was necessary. The thickness of 
the tin partition determined the time at which 
the bomb would act. By careful experiment, 
Dr. Scheele was able to manufacture bombs 
that would become effective in two days, four 
days, six days, eight days — at will. For ex- 
ample, if the tin partition was made one 
sixtieth of an inch in thickness, the bomb 
would operate in forty-eight hours. The thick- 
ness necessary for the longer periods was es- 
tablished by actual test. 

As soon as the bomb was perfected, its 
manufacture was undertaken on a big scale. 
Soon the workroom aboard the Friedrich der 
Grosse was turning out thirty-five of these 
"cigars," as the Germans called them, every 
day. Altogether, before the game became too 
dangerous and Dr. Scheele was forced to flee, 
nearly five hundred bombs were manufactured. 

Next came the necessity for an organization 
to place these bombs upon the ships. First, 
the ships themselves must be known — their 
sailing dates, their names, their berths and 
cargoes. Through German sources of informa- 
tion, the data about merchant ships were 
gathered and by Dr. Carl Schimmel, another 
German agent in New York City, were listed and 

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FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 

classified. These records were placed at the 
disposal of the bomb-placing squad. 

Captain Carl Wolpert was in charge of this 
work. He was the superintendent of the Atlas 
Line, a subsidiary of the Hamburg-American 
Steamship Company, and an officer of the 
German Naval Reserve. Armed by Scheele 
with the "cigars," by Schimmel with the 
list of ships, and by Von Rintelen with un- 
limited money, Wolpert chose a group of trusted 
lieutenants from among the Germans in New 
York. These men frequented the water-front 
and the neighbouring saloons, where they sought 
out stevedores, who could be bribed to place 
the bombs where they were directed. For- 
tunately for the lives of seamen and for the 
property of the Allies, many of these men 
took the German money but threw the bombs 
into the bay. Enough, however, earned their 
blood money so that many ships were set afire 
on their voyage across the Atlantic, some of 
them burning to the water's edge, most of 
them being greatly damaged, the total loss 
figuring well up in the millions of dollars. Many 
a captain in mid-ocean fought the flames on 
his vessel, from the second or third day of his 
voyage, all the way into port. A fire would 
break out in his bunker coal; it might be 
quenched, only to break out in the cargo two 

274 



DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 

days later, and perhaps a day after that start up 
again in the coal. 

This fiendish work was done in cold blood, 
do not forget, at the command of the Imperial 
German Government, at its expense, under the 
direction of one of its most highly placed 
aristocrats, by one of Germany's greatest chem- 
ists, with the cooperation of officers of the 
German Navy and with the cognizance of the 
German Ambassador to our friendly Govern- 
ment. Here was no passion of battle, no 
extemporized savagery of revenge. It was a 
calculated atrocity, perpetrated by the highest 
authorities of one of the most "civilized" of 
the "Christian" nations, using the most tech- 
nical processes of one of the most complex 
arts of modern life. The magic by which the 
slimy refuse of burning coal is transmuted into 
dyes which give to paints and fabrics the 
splendour of the dawn and the beauty of the 
rose, was here debased to the infamous uses 
of treachery and murder. 



THE END 



275 



Ari 3^0 




THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



